Tron Odyssey
by IgnusDei
Summary: "My name is Syd Jung, and I am going to kill Sam Flynn." Set 5 years after Legacy. Quorra enters a new version of the Grid to save ENCOM's MORPHEUS Supercomputer from an infectious program and preserve the Legacy Project before drastic measures are taken
1. Prologue

Tron: Odyssey

0 - Prologue

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney

**Three years ago…**

Syd woke up with a headache. He always woke up with a headache these days. And he always forgot about Rachel. He kept expecting her to be there, by his side, still asleep in the dark. The only difference this time is that he didn't have time to be disappointed. This time, he didn't have time to call her name. This time, the phone rang.

He had received an anonymous text on his cell-phone in the middle of the night. "WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT YOUR PROJECT," it said, and it came with a rendezvous in one of the ENCOM tower's sublevels with a pass code he would need to access the area. He didn't know what possessed him to go: he was just a concept artist, and everyone at the top of the project's hierarchy couldn't convince Sam Flynn (may he burn in hell forever) not to axe the game and fire the whole lot of them. Flynn had made it clear that he didn't want him in the premises anymore (though not in so few words and not quite that politely), but if there was a snowball's chance in hell that Syd could somehow salvage the project after throwing a bowl of hot gourmet beef stew on the CEO's thousand-dollar shirt…well, he'd take it.

Getting to sublevel 3 wasn't difficult: the pass code granted Syd access through the elevator and several security doors. The real panic came when he encountered a guard: having a code was one thing, but to be somewhere without clearance was another problem entirely. He could have run like hell, but thought it was better not to make things harder for himself. Besides, the security guard had just asked him for his ID. It would be rude.

And his head hurt.

The guard had eyed Syd's card, furrowed his brow, and scanned it on his PDA. After a while, he spoke:

"So…Syd Jung, right? What's a game developer doing down here in Special Projects?"

_Special projects? That's what this place is?_ Syd's eyes widened: everyone in ENCOM had heard of special projects, but no one except maybe the board members knew any specifics. It was here that the basic design for FlynnOS-13 and its upgrades came from. Considering that OS-14 and 15 came along just 10 months later, rumors as to what was down here ran from a farm of super-genius monkeys chained to desktop computers to an alien AI recovered from an UFO.

Syd couldn't help but wonder the same: What WAS he doing there?

"Man, I wish I could tell you, but…"

"Yeah, yeah, but then you'd have to kill me, right?

Syd could have just let things stand there, but his curiosity, as always, got the better of him.

"Actually, they just called me down here and didn't give me any details. You know how it is: the bosses say jump…"

The guard chuckled at that: "…heh, you jump."

The PDA finally beeped, and when the alarm klaxons didn't wail, Syd had breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well, you're cleared to be here. Sorry it took so long, the security server must be acti-"

"-Hey, no problem, but could you, huh, answer a few questions for me? I hate to go in there in the dark like this."

"Sure, ask away."

"…What goes on in here?"

"Oh man, if you want specifics, you're asking the wrong guy. All I can tell you is that a lot of hardware goes in and out of here, either in small packages or some really big ones. And then there's the occasional foot traffic, and that's it."

"Foot traffic? Who else comes down here?"

"Besides you, me and the rest of the guard shifts? Mr. Flynn and Mr. Bradley, mostly. And Mr Dillinger, sometimes. And…"

"…And?"

"Well, there's this fine looking lady. Makes quite an impression: raven black hair cut like some rock starlet, pale skin, and has a thing for leather clothes that's snug in all the right places. She's usually with Mr Flynn."

"…Wait. You mean the Girl In Black? I thought she was his bodyguard. She sure doesn't look like a programmer."

At this, the guard just shrugged.

"Are any of them here at the moment?"

"Nope. …and you said someone called you down here?"

"Yeah, I guess either I'm early or one of them's late. Speaking of which, where's room 00? That's where I was told to be at."

"Double-oh...? Huh…You sure about that now?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Well, that's the room Mr. Flynn and that girl in black always ever go to. They always came out with huge grins on their faces moments later…I figured it must be their private love nest when they needed a quickie or sumthin'…although they haven't been there together in months."

"Really? That's interesting."

For a moment, neither of them said anything, and when he noticed the guard looking at him funny, something dawned on Syd.

"WAIT. NO."

The guard held his hands up, smiling.

"Hey, guy?, I'm not judging…If Mr. Flynn's got eclectic tastes, it's none of my business, ya know?"

"I'M NOT- Argh! Look, just get me there? Okay?"

Room 00 wasn't that far away, although one did have to take a circuitous route with a couple of checkpoints to get there. _No doubt so any intruder would have to dodge that many more cameras,_ Syd had thought. When they arrived, the guard pointed at the card reader next to a plexiglas door.

"And that's where I gotta leave you: not allowed to go through past this point. Swipe your card here, and it should tag your chip with an IFF signal that will let you through that steel door on the other side."

"What is that, an airlock?"

"That, or a de-con chamber, as far as I can tell. Doubles as a trap if an intruder gets in without a passcard with a signal. Any other questions?"

"Nah, I'm good."

"Well, _have fun_," said the guard, and he left with a smirk on his face.

_Great. Just great. Before long everyone will think I'm Flynn's chubby love slave. Fantastic._

Syd swiped the card, and entered the airlock. As the plexi door behind him closed, he had thought that if a prank was to be played on him, this moment would be the best time to pull it off. Maybe the klaxon would wail and he'd be stuck in this thing for an hour or two, or a maybe the contents of a bucket of pig's blood would be poured on his head. Or something. When the scanner was done, well, scanning him, the steel door that led inside Room 00 opened, and he went in as he breathed a sigh of relief.

The room itself was bare, save for an obsidian desk and a swivel chair on the other side of the room. The walls were made of big, long, copper tiles, the lighting coming from slim neon tubes crisscrossing the ceiling. In the middle of said ceiling was some sort of post-modern chandelier. _Some love nest, _thought Syd. _There isn't even a couch!_

The desktop then made a beeping sound, and Syd walked up to it. He recognized it as one of those Touchscreen desks with an integrated computer inside. The kind every big wig in encom just had to have. On it, the words, Press Me kept blinking.

"Hey, whatever you say."

He touched the screen, and waited. The virtual keyboard materialized on screen, along with these words:

-Anon- Hi.

Syd couldn't believe it. All of this cloak and dagger for a chat session? He sat down, and began to type:

-Guest- Well, I'm here. You want to tell me what this is all about?

-Anon- This is about you.

-Guest- Is it now? Well, FLYNN, do you want me to pay the cleaning bill for that nice suit you were wearing at the bistro?

-Anon- I'm not Flynn.

-Guest- Yeah, right. Well, you had it COMING you yuppie COCKSUCKER. Do you have any idea how many lives you just went and fucked over? We were ready to make you the greatest game since Space Paranoids, we poured out hearts and souls into it for a whole year and you give us the shaft for what? A fleet of yachts? A new mansion on some tropical island? Oh, wait, you realized we weren't making a Future Warfare clone and panicked? You were with us one hundred percent, you said. This is project is gonna go gold, you said! You sure showed us what your words are worth!

-Anon- There are things you are not aware of. That money was needed somewhere else, There are ENCOM projects that are far more important than games. And yours was not the only project that had to be cancelled. Others were fired. They're getting ready to move on. You're the only one that doesn't.

-Guest- Oh, are they, now? You wanna tell that to Julie Sanders? She's up to her armpits in student loans thanks to leeching, deadbeat parents, and this job was her way out! Or how about Isaac Kent? He's got a sick kid to take care of! The ENCOM medical benefits package was the one thing he needed to keep his son away from the grave! I don't care if you needed that money to save the fucking planet: these people needed help, I helped them get these jobs, and you fucked us over!

-Anon- We are getting off-topic. This is about you.

-Guest- The fuck it is! This is about them! I. DON'T. MATTER.

-Anon- Because of the tumor?

"YES, BECAUSE OF THE TUMOR!" Syd found himself shouting out loud. Tears were forming in his eyes. Wiping them away, He found it amazing how an irc chat could bring out such anger and sorrow in him. He didn't want to confront this, but he had to. He was dying a slow, horrible death, and before the darkness would take him, his mind will have been long gone.

Just like his father's.

-Anon- How much time do you have?

-Guest- What business is it of yours?

-Anon- I want to help.

-Guest- Fuck you.

-Anon- You feel cheated. There are so many things you want to create, so many things you want to make amends for. You just don't have the time.

-Guest- You sure as fuck didn't help in that regard.

-Anon- What if I could give you all the time in world?

-Anon- What if I could give you an endless canvas on which you could paint?

-Anon- What if I could give you clay that molds itself to your thoughts?

-Guest- I'd say you sound like a goddamned cult leader and that I should get the fuck out.

-Anon- You haven't left yet.

-Guest- Right. Hey? Did you offer three wishes to everybody else you shafted?

-Anon- I've already settled Mrs. Sanders' account, and I've made arrangements for Kent's child. I've also arranged future employment for the rest of the layoffs. In other companies.

-Anon- That leaves only you.

-Anon- If you want to take me up on my offer…

A blue YES appeared on the left of the screen.

-Anon- Then press here, and you'll be able to start fresh. On the other hand, if you still think I'm lying, that his is all just a prank…

A red NO appeared on the right of the screen.

-Anon- Then press here. The computer shuts down, the connection ends, and you can go on living what little life you have left.

_What bullshit, _Syd thought. He was just about to walk out when his cellphone rang. He got a text from Julie titled "Miracle". Shortly after that, he got another message from Isaac titled "good news". They both said the same thing: He didn't have to worry about them anymore. This Anon had lived up to his word.

That left only him.

-Anon- In there, you will find a new world.

-Anon- In there, you will find an eternity.

-Anon- In there, you will find your salvation.

His hand reached for the screen.

-Anon- What do you have to lose?

"Nothing. I…have nothing," Syd whispered. "Nothing, and no one."

And then, he pressed YES.

Suddenly, the desk began to recede into the ground. As he backed away, he heard the whirring of machinery above him. He looked up, and saw that the so-called chandelier looked more like a really big camera. What's more, it seemed to be tracking him as he moved around in the chair.

"What in the…"

And then it lit up.

"OH SHI-"

Syd was not a very fast man, but he was amazed to find how quickly adrenaline, reflexes and fear could galvanize him to jump out of the way. He fell on his side, seeing the chair explode in a shower of sparks. Nothing was left of it, not even ashes.

"FLYNN! WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!"

The laser charged again, and he rolled out of the way as it fired. For some reason, the thing could not track and fire at the same time. Getting up, he ran towards the door, and sidestepped as he heard the gun charge up. It narrowly missed him by centimeters.

_Goddamnit, _he thought_. This thing's leading me, now!_

He reached the steel door, but despaired as he found that it was locked.

"LET ME OUT!" Syd cried desperately, banging on the door. "SOMEBODY! HELP!"

He heard the laser charge again, and turned around. Too exhausted to dodge, too tired to run, he leaned back on the wall. He wanted to cry, but instead conjured up all the hatred he could muster.

"So this is how you get your jollies, you sick fucker?"

The laser became brighter.

"I swear to you, you're going to pay, one way or another. You're going to pay."

Brighter still.

"I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL, FLYNN!"

And then the world distorted, and became nothing but light.

~0~

"I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL, FLYNN!"

Syd fell back as the wall behind him suddenly decided to vanish from existence, and landed on his rear. He looked around, wondering if he had just woken up from a really bad dream. He could see it was still the middle of night, but he was apparently in some very posh part of town, because everything had neon lights on it. And the people were dressed in glow-in-the-dark clothes, and were all staring at him, and speaking to each other in hushed tones wondering why this strange fat man was shouting obscenities to the sky while sitting in the middle of (what looked like to Syd to be) a public sidewalk.

_Probably not New York_. He thought. _Maybe Tokyo? But there's no way I'd get to either of these places so fast…_

He tried to pick himself up, noticing how smooth and clean the ground was. Unbidden, rumors that Flynn was working on teleportation came to mind, and he wondered if he had just been used as a guinea pig. He felt woozy, but he managed to get back up without vomiting.

"_Did he call out to the Flynn?"_

"_Shh! You know we're no supposed to speak of him by name!"_

"_We're not supposed to speak about him at all! Now, both of you be quiet! Or it's off to the games with us!"_

The crowd's voices felt distant, and Syd could swear he heard some kind of warble while they talked. Audio hallucinations: those couldn't be good.

"STAND ASIDE!"

The crowd parted, and two men completely covered in glossy black spandex made their way into the half-circle of people. They were carrying glowing staves, and were wearing gold leaf carnival masks with some kind of flow in the dark paint printed on the edges. Syd could swear he could see…rods? Bones? dotted with LEDs…as if their bodies were made of dark glass. They were no weirder than everyone else present.

_Harajuku, maybe? Wait, I haven't heard one word of Japanese or even bad English-_

"IDENTIFY, PROGRAM."

_-and who are these jokers? Cops? In costume? What the fuck? _

"Look, I don't know where I am, and if I caused a disturbance I didn't mean to, but-"

"IDENTIFY!"

"Hey! Who the fuck are you bozos anyhow? Unless you got badges, I don't need to tell you shit!"

Their response came in the form of a staff strike right in the crotch. Syd firmly shut his eyes and choked back a scream. Before he could fall on his knees, one of the goons grabbed him by his left shoulder and turned him around.

"NO DISK," said Goon A. "DEFINETLY HASN'T GOT THE PERMISSIONS TO BE HERE. WHAT DO YOU THINK?"

"I'M THINKING," answered Goon B… "I'M THINKING STRAY RESOURCE HOG."

"A REASONABLE CONCLUSION: LOOK AT THE SIZE OF HIM."

"…Did you just call me a pig, pigs?"

"WHAT IS A…PIG?" asked Goon B.

"PROBABLY SLUM SLANG FOR A HOG," supplied Goon A.

"IF SO, THEN YES," said goon B. A beat, and then: "PIG! HEY, I LIKE THE SOUND OF THAT!"

"Then you'll love this."

Syd was not much of an athlete. And he didn't have much in the way of upper body strength. His legs, however, had to carry his 200 pounds of mass to work every day, and Syd took great pride in his kicks. As Goon B found out, a straight one to his stomach propelled him a good 4 meters backwards until he slammed into a bystander. Goon A, who was holding Syd's shoulder, attempted to grapple him to the ground, but Syd pushed as he pulled, and the masked goon found himself with a fat man on top of him flooded with testosterone.

Syd brought both his fists together and started working on the face.

"You like THAT, piggie?"

Goon A tried to protect his face, but could still feel the impacts.

"SQUEAL, PIGGIE!"

The goon could feel his face crack and de-rezz.

"SQUEAL! SQUEAL! SQU-"

Syd was so full of rage that he could barely feel the first lighting bolt as it impacted with his chest. The second one he definitely noticed, and the third one knocked him backwards into unconsciousness. Goon B walked up to his partner, staff crackling, and helped him up.

"NEED A PATCH?"

"NAH, MY SUBROUTINES WILL FIX THE DAMAGE…TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH."

"SORRY, STILL HAVEN'T PROCESSED THOSE DRINKS FROM THE END OF LINE COMPLETELY…DIDN'T THINK HOGS COULD PACK THAT KIND OF KICK, EITHER."

The Hog groaned.

"DIDN'T YOU SET YOUR ROD TO DEREZZ?"

"I DID: SETTING 6."

Goon B kicked the Hog, just to make sure. When the vagrant grunted, he did a scan.

"BUNCH OF CODE I DON'T RECOGNIZE, LOOKS LIKE A LOT STABILITY UPGRADES BLENDED TOGETHER. EXPLAINS WHY HE TOOK THAT MANY HITS."

"SETTING TO 11, LET'S FINISH HIM OFF."

"WAIT. DE-REZZING HIM WOULD BE TOO EASY, CONSIDERING WHAT HE JUST DID TO ME. I WANT HIM TO SUFFER SOME MORE."

"…SETTING 7, THEN?"

"NOT ENOUGH."

"WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, THEN?"

"I'M THINKING…I'M THINKING DISC ARENA 009. THEY NEED FRESH DATA. BIG EVENT TONIGHT."

"I LIKE THE WAY YOU THINK."

Arena 009 was known as the nastiest pit of death and desperation known to exist in the grid. Built just between the slums and the data processing centers, it picked its fighters from the hungriest programs (who would fight for scraps) for the entertainment of the rabble (who had the bits to pay). It was technically Tier 1, but even Castor himself paid a visit once in a while. It was amazing how vehemently untrained programs fought when you so much as promise them a bottle of energy. They were like mad gridbugs, and hedonistic despot enjoyed every nanocycle of it.

"COME ON, I'LL SECURE HIM, YOU CALL IN A RECOGNIZER AND SCATTER THE CROWD."

The Guards, after going about those tasks, were waiting in the middle of the street, gripping the vagrant by the forearms.

"WOW, HE'S HEAVY."

"YEAH! HOW MANY KILOS IS THIS GUY PACKING IN?"

"PROBABLY…2000."

"DAMN. CAN'T WE JUST COMPRESS HIM?"

"YOU SEE AN ENCODER ANYWHERE?"

"NO…"

"THEN NO, WE'RE NOT COMPRESSING HIM. WHEN'S THE RECOGNIZER DUE?"

"ANY NANOCYCLE, NOW."

Just as it was said, the Recognizer, a huge floating arch trimmed with yellow lights came down from high above. The two guards were ready to get moving, when they heard slurred laughing.

"…Okay, I get it. I get it now. It's finally happened: I'm in a hospital bed, shitting in a diaper and pissing in a condom, and my brain's last working neurons decided to put me in a TRON cartoon…"

The Hog was silenced by a staff discharge to the head.

"DID HE SAY…TRON?"

"DON'T BOTHER LISTENING TO JUNK DATA. TRON'S JUST AN ANCIENT MYTH THE REBELS LIKE TO THROW AROUND."

"I THINK HE MENTIONNED FLYNN EARLIER, TOO."

"…DO YOU **WANT **TO BE THROWN IN THE ARENA WITH HIM? YOU KEEP MENTIONNING THE DESTROYER, AND CASTOR WILL SEND YOU IN WITHOUT A DISK!"

"ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT…"

"JUST LOAD HIM."

-ooo-

Syd woke up to the sound of voices. He felt restrained, and when he regained full consciousness, he realized he was strapped upright on some kind of plank by (and he could not believe this) straps made of some kind of barely visible glowing glass. He struggled against his bonds, but they wouldn't so much as wiggle. He look around: he was inside a large room made of polished stone, bathed in light blue neon light. In front of him, there was some kind cylinder with a chakram latched onto it. Beyond that was a large door, big enough to fit a small truck through. Mounted on the walls as an array of plastic objects. Syd guessed that they were weapons, but they looked too exotic to be practical.

"_A resource hog? A hog that just put up some resistance?" _said a soft, but warbled voice behind him. "_Is this some kind of joke? Hogs don't have the clock speed necessary to make good Disk Warriors!"_

"AND STARVED DATA PUSHERS DO? THAT'S WHAT OPTIMIZERS AND CHEAP ALGORYHTMS ARE FOR."

"_And how's his stability? Hogs have got so much random code they break apart at the first disc hit!"_

"HE TOOK THREE OVERLOADER SHOTS BEFORE GOING DOWN"

"_Low setting overloaders are not the same as a disc!"_

"AT SETTING 6."

"…_What about power?"_

Syd could hear a faint whirring sound, like a digital camera's tape slot opening.

"LOOK AT THIS. HASN'T PATCHED YET. HE'S GOT POWER ALRIGHT."

"…200 bits."

"CAN'T GO LOWER THAN 400 BITS."

_They're selling me_, Syd realized. _Those cocksucking pigs are selling me off! And to what? A gladiatorial Arena? What kind of fucked up country wants to mimic goddamned ancient Rome? _

"AND WE KNOW CASTOR'S HERE TONIGHT. YOU NEED THE TALENT."

He heard the sound of high heels hitting hard floor behind him, getting closer to his right, and then he saw the palest woman he ever saw, clad in a white and dull blue gray one piece plastic suit with the most elaborate gold reticella he had ever seen framing her head, neck and collar bone. She had bone white hair, done in a tight bun but a long wavy strand struck out in defiance over a pearly white mask on the left side of her face. She looked at him straight in the eyes, leaning her head over as if examining a piece of modern art. For a brief moment, Syd thought he saw a flicker of realization come across her face. Couldn't miss it: the uncovered half of her face was otherwise so cold and expressionless she might as well have been wearing a full mask. Before long, one of the goons came at her side, and then Syd wanted nothing more than to finish what he started. He struggled, but the restraints held.

"WELL, DO WE HAVE A DEAL?"

"_Does he have a name?"_

"WHAT? FOR THE REGISTRY? JUST TAG HIM AS HOG…OR BETTER YET…"

The goon got close real close to his face. Syd couldn't see his eyes, or much of his expression because of the spandex and mask covering his face (wait, he could see his goddamned jawbone!) but he just knew the man had a shit-eating grin splattered on his battered face.

"HOW ABOUT…SQUEALER?"

Syd's reply came in the form of a glob of spit propelled from his mouth and straight into the goon's eye. The counter-argument would have been another whack of the staff, but the pale woman calmly stopped him with a motion of her hand.

"_Don't…damage the merchandise, please?"_

The goon wiped the spit from his mask. He soon found it stuck on his glove, which only frustrated him even more.

"DO WE HAVE A DEAL OR NOT?"

"_Not quite_."

"YOU WANNA HAGGLE SOME MORE?"

"_Yes. How about…nothing?"_

"TO THE BIN WITH YOU, THEN. THERE ARE OTHER TIER 1 ARENAS THAT WILL BUY UP A GOOD HOG.

"_There's isn't a Tier 1 Arena in the whole Grid that will buy this one. Haven't you figured it out yet?"_

She leaned in close, and whispered something in his ear. He looked up suddenly. Syd only wished he could see the look on his face, but it wasn't hard to imagine. The man was scared. The woman began to laugh. A artificial, monotonic, fake laugh.

"_You two idiots…scanned him, didn't see so much as one line of data that made any kind of sense, and you didn't immediately bring him to the palace? Oh my! I'm sure Castor will love to hear that one. And I'm just _certain_ me and my sirens will be outfitting you."_

"NO. THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE."

"_I'm afraid that it is. Tell you what…" _she began to caress his arm and motioned him out of Syd's sight_. "I'm going to do you a favor: I'll give you one hundred bits and my solemn promise that I'll not speak a word of this to Castor, and in exchange you…don't mention in your report ever seeing this…vagrant…at all."_

"WE ALREADY CALLED IN A RECOGNIZER. THERE WOULD BE DISCREPANCIES."

"_Then make something up? Say he tried to overpower you and you were forced to Derezz him?"_

"…THAT MIGHT WORK. THE PILOT LEFT AS SOON AS WE DISEMBARKED TO ANSWER ANOTHER CALL. HE…COULD HAVE MISSED CERTAIN

UNFORTUNATE EVENTS."

"_Excellent, then we have a deal, then."_

It wasn't even a question.

"WE DO."

And a moment after that, he heard the warbled sound of…freight elevators? Freight elevators rising, mixed with the even _clack_ of the woman's footsteps as she approached him again. She got closer, and closer still, until she gently laid on her hand on his chest.

"_I haven't seen one of your kind for nearly a thousand cycles…"_

Syd trembled, looking away. He tried to fight his own arousal. He tried to put up a wall of hate against the Slaver Bitch. He tried…It was futile: It had been too long since he felt the touch of a woman, too long since he'd even been allowed to be so close to smell one…Smell the promises of something sweet… Too long since…her.

_No, don't think about her. Don't let the sorrow take you, not again! Not now! Hate. HATE._

"What? Not a whole lot of chinks around here?"

He had conjured up enough of it to look her in the eye, and he realized that she had gotten even closer. It was in that closeness that he found the most disturbing thing about her: she didn't have a smell. That was good. It meant that he couldn't get intoxicated. He'd love to kick her in the shins, though: she stood almost a head taller than him, and he still felt dominated by her presence.

"_Do I make you nervous?" it was almost a whisper._

"No."

"_You don't have to lie to me…I can tell."_

"Then don't bother asking."

"_Hm…what is your name?"_

"Can't you tell?"

"_No." she said, smiling. It's why I asked."_

"Syd."

"…and?"

"Syd Jung."

"_Hi, Syd. I'm Gem."_

"Gem, huh? Truly outrageous dungeon you got here. Your slaves must love staying here."

"_I don't have slaves. I run the Arena."_

"You just gave coin to two people that beat me to submission and brought me here in chains. And now I'm strapped to a board in your basement. Sounds like slavery to me."

"_You're not my slave." _She said, pulling away a little._ "You belong to the Arena. You will be a Disk Warrior. You will fight, and you will keep on fighting until you are de-rezzed, until the crowd grows weary of you…or when you please Castor enough that he deems you worthy to join his Royal Guard."_

"And if I don't comply?"

"_I de-rezz you."_

"I thought I was supposed to be headed straight to the palace. Won't 'Castor' get pissed?"

"_I have his favor. And he values entertainment above all else: making you into a prize combatant will please him far more…and if you die tonight, I can just deny ever knowing what you are."_

"Right, Ok. What if I comply, and suddenly decide to throw the fight? Just sit my ass down and let myself die? A final fuck you and farewell from yours truly?

She leaned in-close then, with amusement on her face.

"_You'll do no such thing."_

"You sure about that?"

"_You are defiant, oh yes. But not that kind of defiant. It's simple enough to provoke a Guard__. A few choice words, a blow to the face, and it would have been over. But you didn't stop there. You kept on fighting. You wanted that guard de-rezzed, and you didn't care if it cost you your life…"_

She held his head with both her hands, locking his gaze into her eye.

"… deep down, You're a fighter. Syd. I can see it in your eyes: you're the maddest kind there is. You won't stop until you've won. If anything, you'll make this one fight very entertaining."

Syd said nothing. As she released his head, he could not help but avoid her gaze: she had him figured out.

"_Now. Let's get started."_

She clapped her hands twice, and on that cue four woman-shaped coffins opened to reveal…four women, dressed like Gem but without the frills or the mask. They approached him, their steps stiff, robotic, and perfectly synchronized.

The restraints pinning his body dissolved, and the board he was fastened to vanished into the floor. He tried to make a run for it, but he found his feet perfectly bound. He was about to fall over and break both his ankles when two women caught him from behind. The other two brought their hands up in front of him, and small, bright lights exploded from all twenty fingers. And then they started clawing at him.

Syd braced himself for some intense pain, but found none. Instead, his clothes were being cut in large strips. His shirt and black hoodie went first, then his pant, and then his socks.

And then his underwear.

The women stepped back, apparently to admire their handiwork. Syd tried in vain to cover himself. He hated his body, and he hated having it stared at. The constant smirk on the women's faces and their cold gaze didn't make it any more pleasant.

"Yeah, I get it. Pot bellies and love handles and back titties, oh my! Have yourself a chuckle, why don't you."

No, Syd decided. This was not his best day ever.

"_Suit?'_ asked one of the women.

"oh that would be nice yes," said Syd, annoyed. and then: "WITH PINSTRIPES AND SHIT. IF IT'S TOO MUCH I UNDERSTAND."

The women cocked their heads, and then looked at Gem.

"_Mark VI,"_ said Gem. _"Pattern 117."_

The women approached again, jabbing their fingers on his chest and shoulders. A rubbery substance grew out where they touched him, creating a second of skin. They then traced lines on Syd's body with glowing fingers. Hard, metallic plates spontaneously but slowly came into being when they finished tracing shapes, and quickly got to working on other parts. Eventually, Syd was covered in a suit of segmented armor that weighed almost nothing at all, and yet felt like a second skin. And yet he still felt like he was wearing nothing at all. Green lines like computer circuitry glowed in the gaps between the plates. A crawling sensation came over the back of his head, and a helmet in the same style as the rest of the suit assembled itself over his head, completely covering his head in metal. And yet, he could still see.

"_That won't be enough,"_ said one of the women.

"_He's too massive, too slow,"_ Said another.

"We're not finished," said Gem.

The women looked at each other.

"Optimize him."

The next minute of Syd's existence would feel like an eternity of agony: it had started simply enough. The lighting in the room went from dim blue to bright orange, a transparent glass tube materialized. Holographic consoles appeared before the women, and they began typing furiously. It was then that Syd could feel himself change: his bones ached, his muscles contracted like he was being electrified. He felt his insides getting hotter and hotter. And he felt a hot coal inside brain, getting bigger and bigger. And then it exploded. And then the alarms went off. And all he could feel was his skin being picked apart. And then all he could feel was his muscles being stripped from his bones. And the bones grinding themselves into dust. And the dust grinding itself into mist. He wanted to scream…he could scream, god could he scream. And yet he had no mouth.

He wanted to escape, he wanted to reach out. He could feel his hand forming out of pure pain at first, and then bone, and he could feel glass break under his knuckles, and the sensation of skin on skin, the skin parting to make way for bone and for bone to make way for IT HURTS. And he heard a scream, so distant and so quiet it could have been never been heard over his own IT HURTS mouthless cry IT HURTS _don't stop_ IT HURTS _he can take it _MAKE IT STOP_ she needs help DON'T STOP_ MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP

. HELP ME

ALL ALONE

**. HELP**

DON'T TOUCH ME

IT HURTS

RACHEL

Are you there?

**RACHEL**

"I'm right here."

I'M SCARED

"Don't be afraid."

IT'S DARK

"I'm right here with you..."

"…with you, in the dark."

He fell on knees that were not his. On hands that did not belong to Him. He whimpered with a throat that was put inside Him. He covered a face that He stole. Gem approached, her heels -THAT DAMNABLE SOUND- announcing her presence. Someone was screaming. Someone said something about needing an emergency patch. He didn't care. Nothing mattered. He didn't care.

"_You are…so, so very beautiful!" _said Gem. She was smiling. He could feel it. It was…an honest one. More real than He had ever seen._ "I wish you could see yourself right now. I wish you could see what I could see."_

She caressed His head, ever so gently. He could feel her touch in the metal.

Someone else had spoken those words to Him, once. Someone had touched Him, just like that, a lifetime ago. The words had not made sense to him at the time. _Why not? _He wondered_. I don't remember, _He answered.

**ATTENTION PROGRAM**

Gem removed the black chakram from the cylinder, which promptly disappeared into the floor. "Alpha package" she said into it, and a red holographic ring appeared inside its inner rim. It was divided in 5 sections, each one with a different blue icon in the middle.

**YOU WILL RECEIVE AN IDENTITY DISK**

Gem mounted the disk on a mount on His back. He could feel it touching his mind, coming inside Him, right into his soul. It was knowledge. It didn't belong there, He knew it didn't belong there.

**EVERYTHING YOU DO OR LEARN WILL BE IMPRITED ON THIS DISK**

The door opened. Light and sound flooded the room. He could hear the wild cheers of a hungry crowd, begging Him to come out. Taunting Him to come out. Threatening Him to come out.

**IF YOU LOSE YOUR DISK OR FAIL TO FOLLOW COMMANDS**

"_It takes a while to take to new algorithms…"_

**YOU WILL BE SUBJECT**

"_But don't worry."_

**TO IMMEDIATE**

"_To learn them, to control them…"_

**DERESOLUTION**

"_...you'll have all the time in the world."_

And Gem walked away. With a motion of her hand, she conjured up a wall to separate her from Him.

"**I'm gOiNg tO kIll yOU."**

Gem chuckled. She made sure he could never lay a hand on her.

"**firSt YoU…"**

She didn't break stride.

"**ThEn fLYnn."**

At this, she stopped and turned to face him. He had just managed to pick himself up from the ground when the two walls came together, separating her from him, and drowning out the noise from the outside. She would have to ask him about that after… Now, she found herself…hoping that he would not die. Not before her curiosity could be satisfied, in any case.

And as for Him… The blinding light, the joyous noise, it beckoned him to come. To take his place within it. To earn it.

To kill for it.

-END OF LINE-

CONTINUE?

Y/N


	2. Chapter 1: The Beast Within

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 1:

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

**ENCOM Building, top floor, present day.**

Ed Dillinger Jr hated having to explain things. Specifically, he hated explaining things to laymen with authority. Most of the board members and the shareholders tuned in via the teleconferencing system had no background in electronics or programming. He tried to use as much simple English as possible, but some things just can't be explained with the terms of a six-year old. Even the Simple English edition of Wikipedia needed hotlinks.

And that was why he had worked with a couple of 3d modelers and editors to create this presentation. Tell less, Show more. And for the most part, it looked like it was working.

"As you can see, the Program Monitoring and Control system is capable to adapting from any viral attack the Supervirus –The Beast- can throw at it."

On the big screen behind him, a war game was taking place between rectangular red "ships" and a swarm of green globs. They were shooting lasers at each other. Ed thought it was a bit much, but he had to admit, it did add a little pizzazz to the presentation. The red blocks' fleet, with a large vertical rectangle acting as a flagship, were outnumbered, barely hanging on, and definitely losing: all very dramatic.

"It is an adaptable program, capable of throwing the infected programs' tricks right back at them…"

As if on cue, the red blocks were changing tactics. Some of the smaller red ships were making kamikaze runs against some of the larger green blobs, and the larger red blocks were forming a perimeter around the flagship, protecting it from their enemy's suicidal blobs.

"…it can also fork- I mean, create a multitude child processes to protect itself and counter-attack. Each process is procedurally generated, tailored and customized with tens of thousands of different anti-malware subroutines, allowing them to deal with any situation as it arises."

The towering flagship opened up on its side, shedding a large portion of itself. From the gap came even more red blocks, and even one so small they might as well have been dots. The tide had turned: The green blobs were being decimated.

"It is the perfect digital army. Any questions?"

On the opposite side of the large circular table, Alan Bradley, among others, were trying not to roll their eyes: they were the handful that knew almost as much about programming as Ed did, and were not impressed by the more theatrical parts of his presentation: they knew the real action was taking place on the command log on the right side of the screen. Ed added it for the sake of being ingenuous, but he did not expect anyone to keep up with the sheer amount of information being put out in real-time on a screen.

Next to Alan, Sam Flynn was looking quite intently at the whole presentation.

"I'm seeing a lot of infected programs being erased outright, here," said Sam. "Your 'diverse' and 'perfect' digital army seems to only know one trick: Delete. Something any of us can do with a keyboard and Shift-Del. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we're far more interested in restoring system stability and recovering our customer's exabytes of data than an outright purge."

"Deleting the infected programs is no longer that simple, I'm afraid. It worked at first, but the Beast adapted and it now severely corrupts any OS that attempts to delete it. Same goes for disinfection. In even simpler terms, it refuses to die. Same goes for disinfection: We managed to recover several executables, and then some infected programs went asymptomatic. We dealt with those too. Then they went Polymorphic. And then Metamorphic. It's only by virtue of their size that we can detect those, but the fact is current byte pattern recognition software isn't cutting it."

"Why not?" said a woman, raising her hand.

"It's like developing a vaccine: you need a sample of inert viral material to make one, and that takes time. By the time we're finished in real-time, the Beast will have gone through 300,000 different mutations, effectively making it a whole new disease. This makes the sample we took outdated, making the vaccine we create out of it completely useless."

"And the PMC's subroutines can make a 'vaccine' in…'real-time'?"

"Not in real-time, no."

"I'm sorry? What other kind of time is there?"

_Oh god. _Ed thought_ Business people. All that math and they couldn't figure out ratios?_

"The 12 gigahertz processor in one of MORPHEUS' towers works a lot faster than your brain does. Say you had an hour long conversation in it with a Turing Module. In the space of time you type in "Goodbye", it would have reviewed the whole conversation millions of times. And it would have to wait an eternity between your replies."

"Basically," supplied Flynn. "A second in there feels like a year. Or a century."

"Oh. So that means the PMC can create a vaccine faster than the virus can mutate?"

_Yes, you idiot. Welcome to the point. We've been waiting for you._

"Yes, that's it exactly."

"You still haven't explained why it still boils down to Delete, Ed."

"I did: the viral code adapts itself to the point where it can perfectly mimic uninfected code to fool scans. Once an executable seems to have been disinfected and restored-"

"-The dormant virus just kicks back in."

"Yes. Complete and total deletion is the only reasonable response to a program infected by the Beast. It's the only way to be sure."

"Well," said Alan, wearily. "That doesn't bode well for the data. Or for MORPHEUS' OS. Shall I call the dozens of biotech firms and aerospace companies that we're about to delete a decade's worth of real-time simulation data?"

"No, I'm well aware of what's at stake here. Fortunately, the beast itself isn't all that interested in corrupting files, just programs and executables. And as for said programs and executables…"

Ed typed in some commands, and the screen turned into a visual representation of a computer system. Red dots were busy eating up green ones. The reds then assumed positions across sectors, causing them to move.

"The PMC's child processes can even take on the OS functions of the infected programs they terminate, thus preserving system stability. You wanted a solution that did not involve shutting down our supercomputer, and I've just provided it."

Ed looked around, everyone, including Flynn, seemed impressed. Alan, however, seemed to be giving him the glare to end of glares, as if he could make Ed burst into flames by the power of his will alone. Ed didn't flinch.

Another board member spoke up. "I'm sold. When do we launch the thing? Ursalife has been on my case for their protein folding data, and the sooner we fix this problem the less likely they'll sue us for millions."

"It's ready to go right now. A few phone calls and I'll be able to release it into MORPHEUS as early as midnight tonight."

"The sooner the better, then. I say we vote now, and if the yays have it, Dillinger here gets on it ASAP."

"There's one thing I need to mention before we do that," said Sam as he typed commands onto his console. "What I'm about to show you is MORPHEUS' central component. Ladies and Gentlemen, this…"

A hologram appeared in the middle of room, it was a graphical representation of a triple Strand DNA sequence, surrounded by console windows detailing multiple data threads and binary code. It was all very overwhelming and fast, but Ed caught glimpses that seemed to make an odd sort of sense.

"…is Legacy."

_Wait, _thought Ed. _Is that Base-4 coding?_ _What in the hell…_

"I thought Morpheus didn't have a central component," said an asian woman. "Isn't MORPHEUS basically a room full of computer towers filled with processors and hard drives?"

"It is, but every system's got a Kernel, and Legacy is it."

"What is it?"

"It's…it's a lot like a Petri dish. We're testing self-evolving coding derived from triple helix DNA, hence the graphic. It's a completely new code architecture: Less efficient, but the potential applications are incredible. It could open new possibilities in science, medicine, engineering… Hell, we've even got the early blueprints for a direct man-machine interface: that alone should have far-reaching repercussions on human augmentation. Selling license agreements for the concept to any of the large biotech firms in India would make us billions over the next decade."

Ed got suspicious right there and then. Base-4 electronics weren't just less efficient than Base-2, the whole idea was utterly pointless: the entire industry revolved around base-2, switching over to anything else would create pointless compatibility issues, would require larger storage, new processor architecture…it would be step backwards, and the current momentum of electronic and information technology development wouldn't allow it. If it did become the new standard, the industry's current talent pool would be rendered obsolete. Legacy, (as far was Ed was concerned) was a joke, and that "man-machine interface blueprint" was a lie.

But he would not voice any concerns. Sam was his boss: if he wanted to waste his time and company resources with pipe-dreams, then so be it. He was still curious about it, though.

"It looks like a simulation, not a kernel."

"It's both."

"…what?"

"Legacy observes the entirety of MORPHEUS: every simulation, every emulated computer system, every process, EVERYTHING. In exchange, it intervenes when system stability is at risk. It doesn't always work: she makes mistakes, sometimes her solutions causes more problems than they solve. Sometimes…sometimes new algorithms get made, better software, better…anything than what MORPHEUS ever comes up with by itself.

_She?_ Ed caught that. He knew there had to be some sentimentality there.

Ed looked at the multiple data threads, and something clicked inside his head: three years ago, when he was granted full admin privileges to fix the problem, there were "black boxes" everywhere he looked, chunks of data partitioned off from everything else. Try as he might, he couldn't hack into them. He had sent a report of the fact, but he was told to ignore the anomalies. Since they couldn't get infected, and the Beast had just mutated from the Enkidu Strain into the Gilgamesh Strain, Ed had complied and ignored the black boxes completely. Now that he thought about it, half the reason he couldn't hack into them was because they seemed coded in a completely different language…the same that he was seeing being streamed right now in front of him.

And suddenly, it all made a sort of sense…the inefficient code structure, the peer-to-peer architecture…

"Mr Flynn, are you making an AI?"

"…Legacy has the potential of becoming one, yes."

There were murmurs in the meeting room now. A bearded man with a vaguely French-Canadian accent spoke up:

"AI? Do you mean the kind with very complex scripts that we shove into games, or…Take-over-the-world-I-can't-do-that-Dave kind?"

"…Not the gaming kind, no."

"Well," said someone else (a Texan, judging from his accent), "I'd say that's a mite bigger deal than new biotech patents, no? Hell, I could ring up the pentagon-"

"-We are NOT developing for the military."

"We're already renting processing power to Avro Aerospace for their simulations! They sure as hell ain't making toys! We could-"

"-I said, NO."

"Gentlemen," Alan interjected. "That's an issue for another time. Right now, the issue is the deployment of the PMC."

"Of course," said Ed. "Mister Flynn, if you're worried that Legacy is compromised by the Beast, I assure you, once you give me access to it and its translation file-"

"-No."

"I'm sorry?"

"Your PMC isn't going to touch Legacy. At all."

"Sir, if I may?"

Ed typed furiously, using his admin access into Morpheus, he brought up every black box location on the holographic projector and overlaid it on the DNA graphic.

"Legacy does indeed have access to every system. If the Beast has infected it with so much as a byte of malicious code, the Virus will eventually surge all over MORPHEUS like poison making its way through a body to the heart."

"It can't: Legacy is a completely different creature: the Beast won't be able to…digest it."

The Texan spoke again: "Then what, pray tell, is the problem? The Beast stays on one corner while the PMC kills it dead, and this Legacy thing stays in another and watches."

"I'm not worried about the beast attacking Legacy. I'm worried that the PMC will encounter it, see her code morphing, and assume he's looking at a new version of the Beast."

"Sir, I can put in commands to scan and report any-"

"-Adaptive programs, sooner or later, go off the rails, no matter how much wiggle room you let it have and how many safeguards you collar it with. When it does get to Legacy, it will see something so new, so completely ALIEN that it will panic. And clocked at 12 gigahertz, none of us will be able to react in time to stop it from doing irreparable damage. Legacy, at best, would get lobotomized."

The French-Canadian spoke up: "Don't you have any backups?"

"At first, it was possible to hold the Legacy Core in it's tower's hard drives. But its needs as a self-evolving program caused it to ignore them, and now it ninety percent of it resides in its hundreds of RAM chips-

"-We use UNIX." Ed was starting to get more defiant. "Not windows. You can create a copy of a running program just fine."

"…you know what? You're absolutely right."

Sam typed on his keyboard.

"I've given you access. Go right ahead and make a copy. Oh, and just in case: use your laptop."

Ed set up his laptop, logged in, and input the necessary commands, glad to be done with this farce. It was a large file, well past the Exabyte mark, but he found enough free space on another MORPHEUS tower…and the Legacy Core's own tower had more than enough room to create the copy. He confirmed the command, and put the progress window up on the holographic pit, removing the Legacy representation.

It proceeded well, at least until something went wrong. Sam smiled.

"Imagine, if you will, that somebody made a copy of you. Not a clone, mind you: another original. He has your memories, your dna, your everything. He has just as much a right to call himself the real you as you do to call yourself the real him. He wants his life back. You want to keep it. And there's only room for one of you…"

Ed couldn't believe he walked into that one.

"Legacy isn't an AI just yet, but it's plenty smart: almost as smart as any of us. And she reacts to a duplicate of herself about as well as any of us."

The progress bar stopped, warning messages came up, and the window fizzled out of existence. Ed checked for the copy, but found none. Then his laptop went up in a shower of sparks.

"That is to say, not to well. And just like any of us, she'd want a word with the guy who did the copying. Ladies and gentlemen, I've considered every solution. At best, every single one of them would corrupt Legacy in some subtle way that will ruin any eventual payoff. At worst, she'll be completely lobotomized. I motion that the PMC gets deployed with strict orders not to attack, enter or even so much as scan Legacy."

The Texan spoke up. "Hell, Sam, you want to keep your pet project safe in your virtual garage, I'm fine with that. I'd hate to be the guy that killed the Goose before it had its chance to lay its golden egg."

When Ed saw the nods of agreement all over the table, he knew there was no point in arguing any more. Sam had said the words everyone here could understand: _billions of dollars. _Sam could promise them _more money. _Ed could only show them more problems. More risks. Worse still, Sam wasn't completely resisting deploying the PMC at all. He just had his conditions. Conditions that seemed perfectly reasonable to everyone else.

"And what if Ed's right?" asked the French-Canadian. "What if the Beast infects Legacy? Won't it be able to bypass the partitions we put around it? What if it gains access to the Tannhauser system? Will we be able to stop it before it spreads over the whole world?"

"I'd hate to be the one that started the Digital Apocalypse," added Ed, trying hard not to look smug.

"First," answered Sam, "Tannhauser behaves as the network hub of every simulation, virtual machine and system within MORPHEUS. It should have been the second vector for infection before the virus got partitioned, but it hasn't shown any sign of corruption since the Beast started manifesting itself, and we haven't had news of an outbreak on the net in 3 years. Even if that changes and the Beast starts infecting Tannhauser, its ICP package is the best, and if it succumbs, Kether will shut down its connection to it, severing all MORPHEUS access to the Internet."

"Our customers are NOT going to like that," said the asian woman.

"I WOULD suggest that we shut down Tannhauser and Kether right from the beginning while the PMC cleans up, but…"

"Our customers would HATE that."

"Just for the record," said the Texan. "If it all goes to hell, it'll be your head on the chopping block. You may own a large chunk of the company, and you've done grand things since you finally stepped up to the saddle…but we own the rest, and this? Right here? This liability has got your name all over it. The whole lot of us won't hesitate to bring down the axe."

"Everyone," said Alan, "it think it's fair to say that we now all know the risks and what's at stake, here. I've revised the motion, please cast your votes on your consoles.

Ed caught Alan immediately pressing NAY. _Damn, _he thought_, there's goes 10 percent of the votes._ He cast his own paltry 1 percent, and waited. The votes were tallied, and the results came out on the holo-projector. 90 percent versus 10. The Ayes had it.

"Alright, let's get started," Alan said, defeated. "Everyone, contact every one of our customers. Tell the ones using MORPHEUS right now to prepare for a potential sudden disconnection. And tell the others that we might just get their data back as early as this morning. Ed, prepare to launch the PMC, with directives to avoid Legacy and its nodes at all costs. Ladies and Gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned."

The room lit up, and almost everyone in the room dissolved into orange light: the teleconference system had shut down. Only Sam, Alan and Ed were actually in the room.

As they got up, Ed was about to voice some protests when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked the message: it was an automated report from security. Someone had breached the Kether router and was brute-forcing its way right through Tannhauser's firewalls. It had, apparently, been done in 10 seconds. An odd piece of malware had been intercepted by the ICPs and had been dissected. He looked at the code: he recognized the patterns. The brute force hacking through logic bombs was a clue, but that…

_Oh god. Not her. Not NOW._

"The tradition lives on."

Alan looked up. "I'm sorry?"

"Nothing, I just need to make a few phone calls."

"…right," said Sam, "you get your people, we'll see you in Special Projects in 3 hours."

"Of, course, sir."

Ed brought up his speed dial menu, and called Flynn's Arcade.

oooxxxooo

And that was Chapter 1 of Tron Odyssey. The boring sci-fi part with jargon-laden exposition. Tune in next time for more interesting stuff.

And IT guys, please don't hurt me too badly… I'm just a lowly windows user.


	3. Chapter 2: Byrd's Flight

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 2: Byrd

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

Byrd hated using Worm subroutines. It felt wrong. Byrd, however, was a program in a whole lot of trouble: He was Malware stuck in the middle of Tannhauser, the gateway to MORPHEUS, and the most ICP intensive system ever. Most ICPs stayed in their firewalls or routers, and left the rest alone. Not here: you sat on a bench, an ICP was watching you. You went to a bar, an ICP was watching you. You went into sleep mode, an ICP was watching you. It was enough to drive anyone nuts, and it made Byrd glitch out his Daemon subroutines: he was perfectly invisible, and then suddenly everyone (including the ICPs, of course) was staring at him.

Fortunately, his Tracer subroutines still worked just fine, and he ran like hell, jumping over obstacles, wall-running from one balcony to the next, and jumping from building to building. It was by pure luck that he managed to find a Dead Zone, an area where none of the ICPs scans could penetrate, but it wouldn't be long before they found him. He needed a decoy, and thankfully, his user had given him the means to make his own.

He was thankful, but the prospect of creating a near perfect duplicate of himself always made him queasy. He had abused the feature once, thinking he could overwhelm a secure system on the net: turns out an army of him wasn't exactly all that effective at infiltration. When he made it back home, he wasn't even sure if he was the original... And the look of horror on their faces as they got derezzed one by one...

_It's either one of us or all of us._ Remembering that he was almost out of time, Byrd got to work, and a perfect duplicate of himself appeared before him. Said duplicate was barely conscious, and Byrd took the opportunity to re-engage his Daemon subroutines and vanish. When the duplicate woke up, he was surrounded by several large figures, clad in huge grey armor lined with bright red. He tried to fight back, but his disk could barely scratch the Security Programs' armor. They overwhelmed him.

"TAKE HIM TO THE DATABASE FOR PROCESSING," one of them had said.

Byrd breathed a sigh of relief. It would take a while before Processing could completely analyze his code and update every single ICP so that they could detect him no matter where he hid. By then, he would be long gone.

~O~

Byrd had sent out an encoded message to his User. He had made it short and to the point: _Discovered. Sent out decoy. Must go Dark._ Hacking an I/O node had taken longer than expected, but his Trojan disguise as a debugger held out long enough to do it. He just hoped his duplicate would hold out on the decompiler. Now, all he needed a ride out of Tannhauser. He went to one the trading Routers hoping to pick up a disguise as an Email Script. He didn't relish the thought, however _(By the Users, they looked stupid!)._

He had found a mark amidst the swarm of activity, and just as he was about to follow it into a dark alley, he was stopped by a very large and very insistent merchant.

"You, my friend, want to get aboard this Solar Sailor."

Byrd cursed himself for being so easily distracted. His mark had been lost in the crowd of Data Pushers. Sighing, he quietly unreadied his Extractor Polygon subroutine, allowing the blade to recede back into his wrist. He faced his accoster: a very large program, two heads taller than Byrd himself and packing at least four thousand kilos of extra data on his broad frame. He wore unassuming beige robe and distinct green mask made out of something Byrd had only seen on pictures his User had shown him… It had a wide grin, curved slits for eyes and a moustache engraved just under the biggest, longest parody of a nose Byrd had ever seen. Floating above him, with a cargo lift deployed down to the ground, was the Solar Sailor in question. It was a majestic vessel, with gold trimmed sails and a shining green hull vaguely shaped like an enormous Swordfish. Byrd scanned both the ship and the merchant:

_Error 404 – Subjects not present. What the plug?_

"…How do you figure that?"

"Because you're looking, not inquiring. Any request for transport…usually… makes its way to the ICPs, and if you're lacking the proper Privileges, well…"

Byrd didn't like where this was going. _Was this a trap? No…ICPs weren't that imaginative or clever. And they wouldn't use masking…they hate Malware code with a passion. They'll dissect it, but they won't use it. Wait a minute…_

"Usually? Don't you mean _always_?"

"Oh no…not always. Some High Processes on certain Solar Sailors aren't quite so..._read only_ when it comes to Privileges. In fact, it's not quite what they're looking for."

"And what sort of things are YOU looking for…friend?"

"The only thing that counts in the end. Wealth."

_Ah, another Malware program. _All Malwares needed bits. Permissions could be stolen, or even legally acquired through the proper channels if your Trojan held up under scrutiny…or they could be bought, the simplest solution there was. And because bits couldn't be faked, because Trojans almost always failed under ICP scans and because thefts were almost always reported, currency was the surest way for Malware to get anything done. As such, Malware needed lots and lots bits.

_And I've only got 20 in my chip. Damn. __  
_

"Where do you need to go?"

"Somewhere out of the way, where ICPs don't care enough to go to. Somewhere I probably can't afford transport for. Good day."

Byrd was just about to walk away, but the merchant was insistent.

"Then perhaps we can work out a deal, then?"

"I'm not su-"

**ATTENTION ALL ICP**

_Oh Crap._

**INCOMING UPDATE**

_Oh Crap oh crap oh crap. They must've finished chopping him up. That leaves me with just a few nanocycles before they all know where to find me._

"Yeah, maybe we can work out a deal."

"Oh?"

Byrd unfastened his Disk from his arm mount, held it as non-threateningly as possible, and handed it out to the merchant. The merchant took it, and scanned it.

"_Fascinating," _he said. "Trojan, worm, data miner…all wrapped in one package! And you come from the Net? Even better!"

Byrd let him assume whatever he wanted about that fact: truth was, his User had done most of the work for breaking him through Kether and into Tannhauser. It hadn't been exactly subtle.

Explosions were involved. Spontaneous de-rezzings, too.

"And my services would be yours until you no longer require them. By then, I will be transported to a system that's as far from the ICPs influence as possible. Do we have a deal?"

The merchant scratched his chin. He seemed to be taking his sweet time, probably to make Byrd all the more nervous and stupid, but then, the large program nodded.

"We have a deal, come on in!"

They got on the cargo lift, and as it rose, Byrd did everything he could not to panic: the thing was taking its sweet time. Any nanocycle now, the update would be complete, and he'd be up to his neck with ICPs. Causing a scene would be just as bad, so he waited, and patience rewarded him: walking in the loading bay, Byrd felt as though a thousand staring eyes suddenly lifted their gaze away, and a feeling a great relief washed over him.

**UPDATE COMPLETE**

And apparently, he had just escaped their wrath. Byrd thanked the Users for masking. He'd have to look into getting upgraded with that subroutine. Maybe he could work another deal with the merchant: could be very useful in his line of work.

"So, my friend, what shall I call you in front of the other passengers?"

"I don't see any other passengers…"

"Oh, trust me, you'll meet them soon enough."

"…Right. Call me Bob. That'll do for now."

"Bob it is, then!"

"And what about you? What's your designation?"

"TAJIIR-EF-0003506. You may call me Tajiir."

Tajiir held out his hand. It was as if it was made of dark obsidian, covered in bright green circuitry. Byrd shook it.

"Pleased to meet ya."

"As am I, as am I."

He let go. He began to tap his chin, as if processing something. Then:

"I think I already know where your destination lies, my friend. It is as remote as remote can be. The trip will be long and there will be many stops, thus granting me many opportunities to use your talents. And! And! I also know of a group of people there who will take you in and protect you, provided you prove yourself to them."

"Really? And where would they be?"

"The Grid, my friend. They inhabit The Grid."

~O~

_Short chapter, but I felt that the scene I planned after that one was better left separate. Plus, this little interlude didn't turn out so little. Might as well turn it into a chapter._


	4. Chapter 3: Missile Command

Tron: Odyssey

Chapter 3: Missile Command

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney

Julie was sitting in front of the main office's computer, trying to debug some of Flynn's Arcade's server issues. It was hot, the AC was broken, she was sweaty. And then, a status window opened up on screen. _Discovered. Sent out decoy. Must go Dark._

"Oooh, Quorra's gonna get so mad."

"Mad about what?"

Before Julie could turn around, she felt someone's chin resting on top of her head and…something warm on its back. From the corner of her eyes came two hands. They gently moved Julie's hands away from the keyboard, and started typing. Log windows popped up on screen, streaming data at a rate Julie's eyes couldn't track. Quorra (that's the one resting her chin on Julie's head by the way) apparently had no problems doing so.

"Damn, those constant scans and rescans caused his masking to glitch."

"I figured as much. Tannhauser's got some slow response times, even if it is an emulated machine in a supercomputer. Intruder Countermeasure Program activity must be insane."

"It's the decoy that bothers me. I know Byrd didn't leave any info inside him that will lead back to us, but those viral databases will have him decompiled and figured out…"

"So…here's to hoping the original gets away before they know what to look for?"

Quorra typed some more.

"…looks like he already did. There's no log detailing the capture and isolation of another instance of Byrd. Good. That's good."

_Wait,_ Julie thought. _We've got access to security logs?_

"…Q, why do you need Byrd anyways? My scripts and…whatever you did got you past Kether's firewalls, and you seem to have acquired all the permissions needed to have a good enough look around…"

Quorra typed some more, deleting and faking log entries across all the systems she was bouncing her connection off of. She did this in less than twenty seconds. With typing. Julie was jealous: in the computer hacking world, speed was life. Either you typed really, REALLY fast (with the help of stimulants), or you used scripts. Julie belonged in the latter, much to her chagrin. Her only claim to fame was that her scripts were homebrewed, and she took some comfort that typers were becoming hopelessly outpaced by faster processes…But Julie found that she was out of her depth when the unexpected popped up: you can't code a new script on the fly, after all. You can only write as many programs as you could, and hope you'd have the right one at the right time.

There were rumors that ENCOM was working on implants that allowed people to jack-in directly to computers, removing the need for keyboards, mice…computer interfacing at the speed of thought. Not that Quorra needed it, anyways: she had just finished covering their tracks in record time.

"Well," Quorra answered, pulling away. "First, there's only so much time even I can stay on before something triggers a trace…"

She walked over to her closet, pulling off a sweat drenched shirt. She was covered in it, Julie noticed. She also noticed how it made her creamy pale skin glisten, and she also noticed her hair wasn't messed up like it should in this heat was that a new haircut she could never pull off short hair without looking like a boy are those new earrings they're lovely oh and that skin damn that perfect skin

_No no no not now, not now. There'll be time for ogling later dammit._

"Second, MORPHEUS is huge…"

Julie looked up, trying not to look startled and hoping to God that Quorra hadn't noticed her staring wistfully at her beautiful- _oh god_.

"…so finding the data I'm looking for? Before I get caught? Not possible. That's where Byrd comes in: he's a Data Miner. If he hasn't been found out, he should be able to sneak in every Virtual System, gather info, and eventually make his way back to Tannhauser and await a chance to send me a report."

"Won't the ICPs just pounce on it as soon as he re-enters?"

Quorra put on a fresh shirt, it was a black one, just her size.

"No, by then he'll have learned enough new tricks and new exploits, they'll be looking for a completely different program."

"…Byrd can rewrite itself?"

"Yeah. he has limits, of course, but he can appropriate new functions without damaging other programs."

"So, now what?"

"So now nothing. I wait, you keep debugging the game servers. We have 1500 players online waiting to get back to killing each other over Future Warfare 3, and the hate mail's piling up faster than I can delete it."

"That bad huh?"

"Yep. Also, Jimmy just beat my Missile Command high score and he needs his ass kicked."

Julie laughed at this. "Go easy on him, he's only fourteen. And retarded."

"And every teenager needs to learn that he's not invincible. Also, he said I looked like a boy."

"…I don't think you look like a boy. At least…not an ugly one."

"Aw, that's sweet! But that changes nothing. **He has to burn**."

And on that note, Quorra left, shouting "RAAAH" as she ran down the stairs. Julie smiled: she liked seeing her fired up like this. Sometimes Quorra could get so melancholic nothing could get her out of her funk. Julie only hoped the high would last longer this time…But that ENCOM business could only make her feel worse, she could tell.

She was just about to start debugging when her cell phone rang. She checked the small caller ID screen. On it, the picture of a bespectacled young man (whose bone structure and clear skin just begged for make-up, she always thought) and the name "EDDIE" was displayed. She let the phone ring six times (because she knew he hated to wait), flipped the phone open, and pressed Call.

"Flynn's Murder Simulators!" she answered, with the cheeriest, sing-songiest tone she could muster. "Turning your kids into killing machines since 1981, how may help you?"

"Cute."

"Oh, hi Eddie. Need something?"

"I want to talk to Quorra."

"She's busy at the moment, would you like to leave her a message?"

"Too busy to talk about BYRD-47T41R-DS?"

_Uh oh._

"Uuuh, what? I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't be coy. And don't assume the firewall didn't sniff your Prankster scripts: I've programmed it with everything you came up with. You know, just in case? And Quorra's typical unsubtle manner of inflicting blunt force trauma on any security program she sees didn't do her any favors, either."

"You never caught us before."

"I was busy."

"Uh-huh."

"Also, I'm recording this. You just admitted to corporate espionage."

_Fuck!_

"Way to treat your little sister."

"Half-sister. I'm just treating you like the bastard you are."

"…_asshole_."

"Let me talk to her."

"She's busy."

"…What part of "admission and evidence of corporate espionage" did you not understand?"

"If the rest of ENCOM knew about it, we wouldn't be talking, now would we? Quorra and I would be sharing a cell right now. Or fighting ninjas. Or fighting ninjas in a cell."

"Those scenarios are getting likelier and likelier than you think with every second you stall."

"You can try and twist my arm all you want: she's on her way to the kill screen in Missile Command, in front of a whole crowd. Her reputation is at stake, and once she sets her mind on something she can't be stopped."

"Games? Really? That's why she can't be bothered to deal with this?"

"Honestly? between playing arcade games and talking to you? Not a tough choice there."

"You're not going to budge."

"Like I said, it's not up to me to move."

"I'm calling the police."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm serious."

"Okay, yeah? Why are we still talking?"

Julie smiled. She had just called his bluff.

"…I'm coming over there."

"Oh goodie! You know, you could have spared me the grief by just coming over unannounced, right?"

"She's screening my calls."

"Can't imagine why. Oh wait, yes I can."

"I'll be there in half an hour."

"Uh-huh."

_Click_

Pretending it was him, Julie stuck out her tongue at her phone, and put the cell back in her jeans' pocket. And then she got worried. And curious. Eddie didn't just call the cops. He very well could have, but he didn't. Julie liked to think it was because he couldn't trace them, but...It wasn't likely. It was more likely he spoofed their trace tracker. And just tolerated their previous aborted attempts at hacking. Why, though? It didn't make sense: fun as it was, corporate hacking was corporate hacking, and Ed's tolerance for shenanigans had never, ever been high.

_Does he…nooooo, he couldn't be carrying a torch for Q? Aw that'd be so sweet. And weird. Does Ed even know about sex? I can't really picture them together, either. Actually I'd rather not picture Ed with anyone. Ew. Well, no use making assumptions, I just might get to find out when he comes over. Body language should tell the story. The juicy, sordid story! _

Julie couldn't help but giggle a little. Her mirth quickly died down when fresh new hate mail made its way to the email client.

"…_damned stupid new security protocols_…Ain't no rest for the wicked, time to get back to work."

~O~

_**Author's notes**__: not really related to this chapter, but I just read the tron wiki's explanation of the Shiva laser, the digitizer in Flynn's basement. This bit got my attention:_

"The laser houses four cylinders that store the molecules and elements (oxygen, carbon, etc.) of the digitized user while in cyberspace. When the user in digitized, the containers fill up with the user's molecules and when he is regenerated, the molecules are shot out of the laser and fall back into place"

_See, this is why you don't try to explain everything in soft sci-fi: follow that logic far enough, and you'll realize a critical mistake. Human bodies have water. Water has got the elements oxygen and hydrogen in it. Hydrogen is explosive. Laser breaks down water. Laser comes into contact with hydrogen. Laser goes boom. And it just stores a whole human being in a small tube? I admit that physics isn't my strong suit, but really?_

_And wait, does it store elements or molecules…or both? If both, why? If you've got the elements, not much point in keeping some molecules whole…unless one of those tubes stores water…which leads me back to the size of those tubes AND YOU KNOW WHAT I'M PUTTING WAY TOO MUCH THOUGHT INTO THIS._

_This is why I'm just going to ignore this bit from the wiki. In future chapters, I won't explain how the laser works. The laser just works, Okay? A wizard's inside and he puts people inside your PC.._

_Ok, maybe not a wizard, but as far as I'm concerned, it does what it does and I'm just going to leave it at that._


	5. Chapter 4: There ain't no getting off

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 4: There ain't no getting off this train.

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

"Sir," said Ed politely as he pressed the Main Floor button. "I'd like to take the time to point out that you are full of shit."

"Now Ed, don't censor yourself, _let it all out_."

In the descending elevator, Alan stood between the two young gentlemen, keeping clear from the glares they were giving each other. He hoped it wouldn't come to blows: While Ed had always been stoic, and Sam had matured a great deal since taking over the company, they were both very opinionated, passionate, stubborn men. They had to be: Ed had to claw his way up to get to where he was today with his father's name being dirt and, to keep Kevin's company together, Sam had to hold on tight against a torrent of politics and backstabbing. And survived one assassination attempt.

"You may have fooled the rest of the board with talk of a technological renaissance. After all, the one thing they understand even less than computer science is biology! 'Far reaching consequences on human augmentation?' Stable Triple-strand DNA is _useless. _It contains no information at _all_."

Alan was surprised at that. _He lied to us? Why?_

"I wasn't aware you were a biologist, Ed."

"I'm not, but I'm connected to dozens of people if the field of medicine and some of them happen to be geneticists. I texted them, and they answered me _very _quickly."

"You realize that what goes on in those meetings are confid-"

"-You don't need to remind me of the rules. I was vague. I might as well have _googled_ Triple Strand DNA. And you didn't exactly come up with the concept: It's been around since 1957. And Yale has been doing work on it as well. They still haven't come up with anything."

Sam just grinned.

"Well, you got me, the DNA thing was bullshit."

Alan couldn't believe his ears. "Sam!"

"I needed to convince the board to keep the PMC away from Legacy! That AI bit? That's _true_. If that blitzkrieg of an Antivirus package Ed here made locks Legacy down, all of its development will be ruined!"

"You didn't have to pull the wool over the board's eyes, you could-"

"The board is tired of this shit, Alan! I promised them a steady influx of millions of dollars, and the Beast ate up a third of it, and it eats up a little more of it every single day! Our customers are putting pressure on us! Nobody wants to hear that the real big payday of it all is decades away from fruition! I needed something short term…"

"Like that so called Man-Machine interface?" Ed accused.

"Now, that much I know to be true," said Alan. "We've made real progress on that, and we're already on the prototype phase…but it didn't come from Legacy, did it?"

~0~

_Sam woke up to the sound of screaming. It came from Quorra's room. It wouldn't stop. He ran in, busting the locked door down with a kick. He found Quorra writhing on the floor, clutching her head. She started slamming it on the hardwood floor._

"_SAM, PLEASE! MAKE IT STOP!"_

_He ran to her side, and he grabbed her shoulders, trying to keep her from hurting herself._

"_Quorra? Quorra! What's happening?"_

"_THE NOISE! MAKE IT STOP!"_

"_I don't understand WHAT NOISE?"_

"_IT'S EVERYWHERE AND ALL AROUND ME AND IT KEEPS PUTTING THINGS INSIDE MY HEAD __**MAKE IT STOP!**__"_

"_I'm not hearing anything! I don't know what you're talking about!"_

_Her head convulsed, and Sam's heart sank. Was she having a seizure? She took a deep breath, and her mouth opened wide, and a warbled sound, like a swarm of bees screaming in front of a fan. Sam vaguely recalled that sound…something from a long time ago, from when he experimented with early 56 kbits modems…_

Oh god. She's picking up Wireless signals. And we're in the middle of downtown!

_He needed to think fast. The basement. Tin foil. Phone call._

…

"_There a nodule, there," the doctor said, pointing at an X-ray, "in the base of her skull, and the engineers tell me it's acting as a receiver…"_

"_Cut it out of her."_

"_Are you su-"_

"_Cut. It. Out. Of. Her."_

~O~

"Not Legacy, no. I…I came up with the concept at home."

"Well, that's something, at least."

Ed was still glaring holes in Sam's skull.

"What, Ed? So you caught me telling a white lie. Before you string me up in front of the board, you're gonna have a real hard time proving to anyone that Legacy itself isn't an AI in the making!"

"I honestly don't care if it's SHODAN or a VOCALOID, sir. That Base-4 programming language in Legacy? That's the problem, right there."

"It's not compatible with the Beasts' base-2."

"I've worked on the Beast for the past 2 years and a half, and I've learned to _never_ underestimate the Beast! Legacy is interacting with Morpheus, isn't it? That means there's a translation program making that possible. Once the Beast gets to _that_, it's going to eat up Legacy, and then, there will be no stopping it. You have got let me see that file, let the PMC acqui-"

"-NO."

"Then let's shut off Kether immediately! Stop the goddamned digital apocalypse from-"

"-The board won't let us! They want that money flow to keeping coming in for as long as possible!"

"They don't have to know!"

"THEY'LL KNOW ONCE THE ANGRY PHONE CALLS START COMING AND THEIR LOG UPDATES FINGER US!"

"GENTLEMEN." Alan had enough of this. He pressed for the current floor, the elevator stopped, and the door opened. "This argument isn't getting us anywhere Like it or not, there's just too many factors at work preventing us from taking the sanest solution. We're stuck on course. We can only pray the iceberg we're headed for doesn't breach the hull."

He walked out. But he had to fire off one more shot.

"And let's be honest, we wouldn't be in this mess if you had worked on this together right from the beginning."

And on that, the door closed.

Ed and Sam said nothing, stewing over Alan's words: he was right; the fuck-up started 2 years ago when they decided to keep out of each other's business. Had Ed pushed the matter, he would have found out about Legacy earlier. Had Sam been more trusting, He might've been able to stop the Beast from progressing so far, or ensured the PMC could never harm Legacy.

There was a ding, the elevators doors opened to the main floor, and Ed walked out. The doors closed, and Sam wondered why the elevator wasn't moving. He then realized he hadn't pressed his floor.

"Dammit," he muttered.

And he slammed his fist against the wall.


	6. Chapter 5: Curiosity

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 5: Curiosity

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

Ed hated coming here. It smelled like old dried piss, the buildings were falling apart, and he felt as though his wallet was screaming "steal me" to every truant lurking in the dark. The only good thing about it was, strangely enough, the video arcade Quorra had reclaimed, restored and reopened. She had kept most of the classic machines, ordered some new ones from Japan, and even had some console booths set up. There was just enough room for a bar and several snack and soda machines. And she kept the name: Flynn's. The whole place was meant to give the neighborhood kids a place to go while their parents worked their double shifts or suffered their hangovers (and curing them with more booze, Ed assumed) and keep them out of trouble.

Here was the kicker: you could play every machine for 1 penny, the food in the machines was sold at half-cost, and you could play the consoles for free for one hour every day. Naturally, kids of all ages flocked to the place and inevitably, this didn't go very well with some of the small time gangs of teenagers that "ruled the streets", as it were. There was some friction to her presence, but Quorra eventually brought them around. How? Ed didn't know, but he had suspected it involved some spectacular violence.

Ed spent a minute coming to the conclusion that _Yes, he did have to get out of the car _and that _Yes, he probably should just leave his wallet in the glove compartment out of the reach of filthy little pickpockets._ As he walked away from his vehicle, he activated its security system with his phone, and then he immediately regretted telegraphing the fact that _Yes, he did have a 500 dollar piece of modern technology in his coat pocket. Two, in fact! _ Sighing, he crossed the street to enter Flynn's, and once inside he was greeted with a loud klaxon, and red light

_Oh dear god, a metal detector. Are things so bad here that you need this much security for an ARCADE?_

Two large men turned to him, ready to beat him into submission should he give them any trouble. The one on the left, bald and overweight but with VERY big arms, spoke first:

"You packin' heat?"

"I'm sorry?"

"He's asking you if you've got a gun on you," supplied the bouncer on the right. "Looks like you're carrying just enough metal for one."

Ed sighed, raising his hands. "Jacket, inside pocket, left side. My left."

The bald bouncer reached in Ed's Jacket, and produced what looked like a medium sized handgun.

"Well, you're gonna have to…wait, what the hell is this? That gun from Blade Runner?"

The bouncer examined the weapon. Naturally, he decided to try to see how it felt in his hands. Ed's eyes widened.

"Sir…"

"Jack, don-"

Jack soon discovered the XV-52 Electrolaser pistol's main security feature: a finger print scanner wired to several electrodes ready to discharge a sudden burst of fifty thousand volts, followed by 19 pulses of two thousand volts if that didn't discourage some mugger to drop the weapon. Jack slumped, and his partner kneeled next to him, checking his pulse while securing the weapon.

"You okay, man?"

Jack groaned, and he had trouble forming sentences for a second. "What the hell was that, Trent?"

"I told you to do your homework! There a lot more toys coming out since we left the beat!"

Jack managed to get up. Ed couldn't help to admire the man's resilience: he held on to the gun throughout the whole discharge…much to the entertainment of several kids crowding the scene. The one called Trent then stuck a tag on the stun gun, and gave Ed a ticket.

"…I'm not in trouble, am I?"

"Nah, fuck up's ours, but we still need to keep your weapon. Just give us this ticket when you want to leave."

"Do be careful with that."

"Don't worry, I'll keep it safe: I'd hate to see kids get their hands on a bona-fide electric raygun. They'd shoot the place up!"

_Lovely, _Ed thought. "Is Quorra in her office? She is expecting me."

"Is she? She didn't tell us anything…of course, she's busy and all."

Trent, smirking, pointed to congregation of agitated teenagers next to vintage TRON machine.

"Ah, yes, the ever futile quest for Missile Command's kill screen."

"Well, you can wait at her off-"

"-Yes, I know where her office is. Anyone up there?"

"I think Julie's up there doing server maintenance."

_Why would anyone do server maintenance in their boss' office?_

"Thank you, and please, don't lose that."

"Yeah, yeah."

Ed hated crowds. Especially crowds of kids going a bit wild over the Yeah Yeah Yeahs'_ Heads will roll_. Making his way to the stairs was not very pleasant: he caught two (_two!_) pickpockets, one trying for his wallet (thank god for chains) and another tried to go for his cell phone. Neither was successful, and Ed did not bother causing a scene over failures. Arriving at the office door, he knocked three times, and waited.

"Who is it?"

"It's me."

"Oh. Nobody's here, go away."

"Julie, I do wish you'd take this seriously: you didn't just hack into some laptop to dig up some dirt on an ex-boyfriend's new lay. You infiltrated the most powerful supercomputer ever created, host to many a small corporation's sensitive information and experiment…and tried to leave a _data miner_ in it."

"…fine. The door's unlocked."

Opening the door, the first thing Ed noticed was a mess of empty glass bottles with various brands of spirits and sodas. The coffee table was full of them. Ed raised an eyebrow.

"…Does Quorra have a drinking problem?"

"Hm? Oh, right. She's been really knocking them back today."

"_Today?_ All of this _today?_ And she hasn't died?"

"Oh she's still sober."

"That's not possible."

"I noticed that she never, ever got drunk no matter how much she drank. I asked her about it, and she told me she has a condition that prevents her from getting inebriated. Alcohol passes right through her system."

"Then why bother drinking?"

"Says she likes the flavor. I really don't think she gets the same kick out of it that we do, honestly."

"And that doesn't bother you in the least?"

"Considering Quorra gave me this job when all I had is a high school diploma and my honest promise that I am really, really good at tech support…she could be an alien from outer space out to suck our brains and I honestly wouldn't care."

A beat passed. "Speaking of Debugging…"

"Oh, yeah. What is wrong with that security package you sent us? We set all the permissions and yet it still manages to mess up connections!"

He walked over to her, and tapped her shoulder. "Let me have a look."

Ed typed several commands, into the diagnostics window. After a while, he realized something.

"You've just been looking at the security package."

"Yeah, that's where the problem should be…"

"It's not. Look somewhere else."

"Oh come on! Just because you made the damn thing doesn't mean it's infallible!"

"It may not be invulnerable," Ed said as he threw her a meaningful look. "But it has been tested on untold different systems in a multitude of scenarios. The security's fine. You might want to take a look at CLOUD: knowing Quorra, there are some fine details that she missed."

"I don't think-"

"-Just do it, alright?"

CLOUD was a piece of software Quorra claimed to have put together in her basement, but Ed personally suspected she stole it from some poor development team within ENCOM (or worse, some other company). It was basically Cable Television for PC gaming: If you had a good connection and the necessary controllers, you could play any game you wanted regardless of its hardware requirements. Image quality and controller response depending on latency, Quorra decided to limit the service to the city. Nevertheless, she had more than 3000 subscribers already…and every new customer brought a new machine with its own quirks, exposing some previously unknown bug, and Julie was really, really busy figuring out the kinks.

Ed decided to sit on the corner couch next to the office windows overlooking the main arcade floor. Looking out at crowd and hearing the cheers, He suspected Quorra would take a while longer.

"Ah-ha! there's the problem!"

"You're welcome."

"Hey, Ed?"

"Yes?"

"Did you and Quorra ever date or something?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Why would you even ask me that?"

"Well, for one thing, you haven't given us up to the cops. Then there's the fact that whenever Quorra needs something, you're the one to deliver. Like this security package here."

"My boss and Quorra used to date."

"Quorra and Sam Flynn?"

"She hasn't told you."

"No! Wow, no wonder we've got such good gear!"

"The fact that she runs his father's arcade wasn't some kind of clue? In any case, Sam and Quorra are still very friendly, and when she needs help, he usually delegates the task to me. I even had to teach her FORTRAN."

Ed didn't think about those days very fondly. When Sam finally took over, he feared for his employment: Their respective fathers' history was…not a good one, and Ed was surprised to find that Sam was, at heart, a meritocrat. He could still smell fear, though, and he took advantage of this several times. The first time he did so was with a "request" to teach a girl Ed first suspected to be a prostitute how to code. While Quorra proved to be a genius, soaking up knowledge like a sponge, she could be just as exasperating as a small child on caffeine.

"Heh, look at you, mister member of the board. Didn't think you'd have to be Flynn's gopher, eh?"

"…I am NOT his gopher."

And then, the door opened.

"Yes you are," said Quorra. "Frankly I'm amazed you put up with it…What's the big title on your office door, again?"

"Lead Security Programmer. Considering you're the biggest security risk to ENCOM there is, personally overseeing your technical issues is, sadly, part of my job description. I take it you're done competing with adolescents?"

"Yep. Didn't make the kill screen, though. Frankly, I don't think there is one! That thing just goes on forever!"

Quorra took out a bottle out of a mini-fridge, snapped off the bottle cap with her bare hand, and lounged in the corner of the big couch dominating the office.

"So, what brings you here?"

"Julie didn't tell you?"

Julie rolled her eyes. "I told you she couldn't be disturbed!"

"Alright, it's about this."

Ed reached in his jacket pocket and threw something at Quorra. She caught it casually, and examined it: it was a small USB flash drive.

"What's this?"

"Your piece of Malware."

Quorra allowed a jolt of electricity to run between her fingers, through the drive's chip. It felt like Byrd alright, but he wasn't complete. _Yep, it's the decoy, _she thought. She put the drive in her pocket, making a mental note to transfer the file inside her computer. _Poor guy needs a rest_, she told herself. _Hopefully my PC has got a few bars and comfort programs he can go to._

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said.

Then Ed produced his cellphone, and a sound played from its speaker.

"_Don't be coy. And don't assume the firewall didn't sniff your Prankster scripts: I've programmed it with everything you came up with. You know, just in case? And Quorra's typical unsubtle manner of inflicting blunt force trauma on any security program she sees didn't do her any favors, either."_

"_You never caught us before."_

Julie cringed. Quorra sighed.

"Ok, you got us."

"I do, but since you haven't succeeded, and because Sam had always bailed you out of trouble before, I didn't bother with the police."

"How nice of you."

"Quorra, are you embezzling?"

"What? No! CLOUD's just getting on its feet, but it's making more than enough dough to keep this place running. Speaking of which: Julie?"

Julie had just finished typing. "Problem's fixed, just need to compile a new driver and we should be good to go."

"Whew, thanks!"

"So," Ed said, adjusting his glasses. "Is it just your idea of fun, then?"

"Not exactly."

"You have an agenda, then?"

"Maybe."

"That's not good enough, what are you after, really?"

"See, 3 years ago, when I left Sam, he still left me User access to MORPHEUS. It was fair, I helped design the thing! But then, out of the blue, he makes me a guest. Then later my password stopped working altogether."

"So that's it? You and Sam are having a-"

"-Then he wouldn't so much as talk to me anymore. The only communication I've had with him was through his secretary: she said that he was busy with a project and…Besides the occasional holiday card wishing me well, that's pretty much it."

"He hasn't told you anything about this project of his?"

"No! Nothing at all! He didn't consult me at all about it, and that's just frustrating!"

_She doesn't know about Legacy, _Ed thought. _Interesting._

"But then, just a few weeks ago, I hack in, find this sleeping monster of a security program called the Program Monitoring and Control: a self replicating, adaptive piece of software, and I tell to myself, 'what the hell is going on?' "

"And then I detected you, and then security got even tighter."

"Right, thanks for that, by the way! So wrote up Byrd to investigate but then you caught him. So that leaves me with this last recourse."

"Which is?"

"Asking you _what in the fuck is going on._"

"And you think I'm just going to answer you?"

"Oooooh yes you will. You think I'm a thorn in your side now? I can unleash holy hell on Tannhauser's firewalls and you know it! And I can even do it from a phone in Jail! One way or another, I'm going to find out what's going on, so save yourself a lot of grief and just tell me."

Ed considered. While he had no delusions about his abilities as a programmer, he hadn't quite met a hacker like Quorra. While the very best crackers learned to be subtle very quickly under pain of jail, Quorra never did, and gleefully caused untold havoc with Intruder Counter Electronics, setting off alarms, and yet still managed to extract a file just in time before getting traced. He had been victim of her wrath once in a hacking wargame he had challenged her to in order to test her abilities. He was overwhelmed, and he couldn't prevent her from reaching the goal. She could take out all of Tannhauser if she wanted to, and once she did, the Board would be looking for a scapegoat, and Sam would gladly point the finger.

_That girl is going to get me fired._

Sighing, Ed removed his glasses, and massaged his eyes. He was tired, and in just a few hours he'd have to deploy the PMC, but not before crippling it. But before even that, he'd have to cough up some corporate secrets just to appease an uncompromising, entitled computer genius. All in all, not a good night.

"MORPHEUS is infected."

Quorra couldn't believe her ears. Her shock could be felt across the room. "What? How?"

"You've made it past Kether AND Tannhauser. You tell me."

"I did NOT infect-"

"-I know, you couldn't have. In fact, one of the main theories of the origins of the Beast is that it just…spontaneously came into being in one of MORPHEUS' simulations. Ground Zero should have been Tannhauser, but it has shown no signs of infection."

"Why's it called the Beast?" asked Julie.

"Someone in Security Programming called it that. Considering its capabilities, it was appropriate, and the name stuck."

"And the PMC?" asked Quorra."

"It's the solution to the problem. A virus to fight a virus."

"That's insane! That thing is bound to completely mess up MORPHEUS!"

"You don't know that: I've programmed it to take over OS functions-"

"-It's just going to replicate itself until it overwhelms the virus! And then the virus is going to try the same, and before you know it, MORPHEUS is going to crash!

"It's the only possible solution!"

"It's not!"

Ed then explained everything: the politics that prevented him from just shutting down the whole machine. The fundamental design flaw that prevented him from simply isolating the infected towers. And the ever changing nature of the Beast that prevented him from creating a proper anti-viral cure.

"And you know what else? Sam's 'special' project is in there too! And he doesn't want it compromised by the PMC! So here I am, about to start a digital war to save the company, and your ex-boyfriend renders it all moot by forcing me to leave a potential vector of infection unchecked!"

Quorra listened and understood Ed's plight, but somewhere in the back of her head, something echoed: _spontaneously came into being in one of MORPHEUS' simulations._

_Spontaneously. Like me. Could it be? After countless cycles, has another miracle finally occurred…? And I had lost all hope…But a Virus? Like Abraxas? It couldn't be…all this time, all this effort building a system with infinite possibilities, and it conjures up a virus?_

_Unless…_

_I have to see. I have to know._

Ed took a moment to compose himself. Then he got up.

"This is a volatile situation. It could very well be resolved without any fallout, or it could spell disaster for the whole world. And the last thing I need, the last thing ANYONE needs, is a couple if playful hackers messing around! For the next 24 hours, I want both of you, to please, _please_ not do _anything_ to MORPHEUS _or_ the PMC."

Quorra got up, seizing him by the arm.

"I can help you."

"No you can't. This is beyond you."

"You don't know what I'm capable of."

"…I'd like to believe that you could just get in there and fix it all. Really, I do. But all you've shown me is that you're an excellent saboteur. You can break in, steal, delete…but you can't fix_ anything_."

And Quorra just couldn't respond to that. It was the awful truth, after all. _More than he realizes,_ she thought.

"Let me go."

And she let go of him, letting him walk away.

~O~

"Sir," said Mister Swift to his headset. "Dillinger is leaving the premises. Shall we follow him?"

"_That won't be necessary,, he is about to start the next phase of the Experiment. How goes your surveillance?"_

"The subject so far hasn't left the arcade. She occasionally comes out for supplies or to sign for deliveries, but she hasn't left the area in weeks."

"_Considering her recent online activities, we suspect that might change soon. Have you managed to glean any information about their conversation?"_

"Sorry, sir. Infiltrating the arcade isn't possible. Too crowded."

"_You and your team were trained in social stealth._"

"Stealth in _adult_ society, sir."

"_Cute._"

"We could have gone in after closing time and planted bugs, but you've ordered us not to."

"_The subject might detect you and kill you, and if not, she'll find your bugs. All quite easily."_

"I'm not so sure about that." Mister Swift tried (and failed) to hide his impatience. He had been stuck with two other men in the shittiest apartment in the shittiest part of town for months, watching the cleanest, shiniest arcade on the other side of the street. He needed to stretch his legs, badly. Hell, he wouldn't mind playing one of those games: he thought he saw a _Temporal Crisis_ light-gun machine in there. It was one of his favorites when he was a teenager.

"_Don't underestimate her. Van de Kaap did. His mercenaries did. They're all dead, now. We have pictures of the aftermath. Here._"

Mister Swift's vision, through his eyewear, was then filled with several images of gore. Men wearing heavy body armor had been shot repeatedly in the throat and face, and others in CQC gear were cut to pieces. Mister Swift wasn't fazed. He had partaken in that kind of violence before. But it did bring things into perspective.

"_Would you like to see the surveillance footage? Because we have plenty of _that."

"No."

"_Just keep watching her."_

And on that, the connection was cut.

~O~

_Authors notes:_

_Whew, bit of a long chapter here. Took me 3 days to hammer that one out. Kinda ruins the short chapter format I had been doing lately, but this had a sort of momentum to it that refused to be stopped. _

_And don't worry, Quorra isn't a raging alcoholic. As Julie said, alcohol doesn't affect her in quite the same way. There IS a reason why she has to drink, though. More on that later._

_Now, I'm itching to go back to Syd, but I'm torn between surrendering to my urges and spoil the surprise, or be patient and have him reappear at the most dramatic moment possible. Decisions, decisions._

_Ah, mister Swift. Low tolerance for boredom and disregard for human suffering. He's just a peach, isn't he?_


	7. Chapter 6: Start Up

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 6:

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

It was 11:12, well past closing time. Julie had just finished patching out the server's issues and locked up the tower it was encased in. Jack and Trent had hushed out all the customers and left themselves, so everything was nice and quiet. The only thing left to do was to leave and let Quorra lock everything up…but she had been melancholic ever since Ed left, and Julie couldn't help but think she could use someone to talk to.

_Maybe even a shoulder to cry on?_

She knocked on the office's door three times. Nobody answered.

_Did she leave?_ Quorra only left the Arcade when she needed something, and that was usually during the day. Curious, Julie tried to open the door. It wasn't locked.

"Hello?"

She saw Quorra sitting on the couch, her feet on the cushion and her arms propped up on her knees. She had been looking out the window, staring out into nowhere in particular. It took a while for her to notice Julie's presence.

"Hm? What is it?"

"I uh…I just finished patching the server. I've also sent out an update to our customers. They should be logging in shortly."

"Oh. Ok."

Julie just stood there, unsure what to say but desperately wanting to say something. Quorra broke the silence for her.

"Is there anything else?"

"Well…yeah."

"…go on."

"So uh…you and Sam?" Julie asked, forcing a smile. "How'd that happen?"

"Hah! Yeah, I have a hard time believing it happened myself. I'm surprised you already didn't know: tabloids took plenty of snapshots of us, called me the Mysterious Girl In Black."

Julie sat on the edge of the couch.

"Oh, I don't read tabloids."

"Celebrity gossip websites?"

"Pretty much the same, so no."

"Well, I was all over them. Not sure I liked the attention: those paparazzi can really get in your face. Plus I had a tendency to break theirs. But anyways, me and Sam…me and Sam, where to begin...?"

"Well, come on! I'm dying of curiosity here."

"…I was in pretty bad place. There was fighting on streets, people taken from their homes never to be seen again, all because of a tinpot dictator with delusions of creating the perfect…state."

Julie couldn't believe her ears_. Is Quorra from some forgotten corner of Eastern Europe? A white South African? She doesn't have an accent, though._

"And then came Sam Flynn. He found himself in trouble with the local law enforcement, and I saved him. In return, he got me out of that horrible place. We owed each other's lives, and we were taken with one another."

"Aw, that's so romantic…"

"He took me around the world, went around it in 80 days-"

"-like in the book?"

"Yeah, like in the book. We also talked a lot, shared ideas, and we got to believing that together we could change the world."

"…And then what happened?"

Quorra's smile faded."

"Reality happened."

"I don't understand."

"Sam's the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation, and he had spent most of his life avoiding his responsibilities. Business wasn't his forte. Neither were politics. A lot of backstabbing happened, and other big businesses like Van de Kaap went after him."

"Wait, that big, worldwide diamond company? Why would they bother? ENCOM isn't even in the jewel business!"

"Artificial Diamond Processors."

Encom's biggest contribution to electronics 4 years ago has been a new line of processors made out of artificial diamond. While the technology to make synthetic diamonds had been around for years, Sam had invested heavily into it to create a new type of processor capable of reaching speeds of 12 GHz without melting. ENCOM had announced that in a few more years, they would perfect a processor capable of reaching speeds as high as 81 GHz. But every electronic miracle had its price: While the Diamond companies were still keeping the "cultured diamond" businesses under their thumb thanks to less than legal methods and advertising campaigns favoring elitism, Sam's investments in the technology caused the cultured diamond business to soar, and the value of natural diamond plummeted. All of a sudden, African warlords and revolutionaries had lost a vast source of revenue, and companies like Van de Kaap were going under. VK put pressure on ENCOM to withdraw its funding of synthetic diamond, but Sam had refused. In fact, as a final 'screw you', he even opened a chain of synthetic jewelry stores.

Julie had read about Van de Kaap's financial demise (shortly after news of his mysterious physical one hit the internet), but she hadn't paid all that much attention to it, and she didn't make the connection to ENCOM until just now.

"Oooooh…"

"Yeah, you've heard about it all, right? Talk about making waves, huh?"

"No kidding…"

"Well, after that, things just weren't the same. In just two years, me and Sam had to suffer from politics, the media, and VK's less than savoury harassment. And Sam? Sam… He just wasn't the man I knew anymore. He learned to be good businessman very quickly, which meant becoming kind of an asshole. You remember that massive layoff?"

"Yeah…Me and a lot of good friends got the axe that day."

Unbidden, came the memory of Syd and that hot stew video. In a restaurant, a paparazzi was filming Sam on a cellphone camera when all of a sudden Sam's bodyguard reacted to someone off-camera. Then a foot got planted on the bodyguard's abdomen and he slammed into Sam's table, causing a fine mess and ruining a 500 dollar shirt. Syd came into view, screaming obscenities right into Sam's face when two other bodyguards seized him and took him outside. Julie couldn't help but smile: The video had gone viral, and Sam was thoroughly humiliated. It didn't get their jobs back, but it was worth a chuckle. Two, even.

"…but we got him back, though."

"Heh, yeah, you did. In any case, after that…after I just didn't feel the same way I did about him anymore. He was changing into someone else, and I just couldn't be by his side watch it happen. So I left him, started this place."

"But you're still friends, right?"

"…I thought we were. He helped me set the place up, after all. But recently, he's been keeping secrets. Something big is happening right now, and he's using MORPHEUS to do it."

"About that…What are you going to do about Byrd? That PMC program is going to find it for real, and Ed's going to be right pissed."

"It's not really Byrd I'm worried about. I'm more worried about that Virus. You heard Ed: _it came out of nowhere._ I would kill to have a look at it!"

"Come on, a virus is jut a program, and programs just don't come out of nowhere!"

"…Yeah, I guess you're right. But I'm still curious though."

Julie's watch beeped. 11:30, it was almost time to go home. Quorra got up, and put on her leather jacket.

"You going home, Julie?"

"Yeah…where are you going?"

"Is downtown out of the way for you?"

"Not really." _Actually, it is just a bit, but I'm starting to like where this is going…_

"Cool, because I need a ride."

~O~

It was Mr. Quick's turn at surveillance, and Mr. Swift was ready to go to sleep. He only hoped Quick would just shut the fuck up and let him, but it wasn't likely. The little man just loved to talk. He looked forward to the day when Management would decide that Quick was a security risk and would order him to slit his throat and bury him in an unmarked grave. Until then, he would just have to put up with him.

_Who knows? Maybe Quick got tired of whining all the time. A man can dream._

"So uh…why are we doing this, again?"

_Oh for fuck's sake. _"Because we're being paid to do it. Shut up."

"But you got to admit, boss, this is weird! We're trained killers watching this girl 24/7 like a bunch of pervs…and they won't even let us do basic electronics surveillance."

"I gotta say," said Mr. Fast, from the kitchen. "I'm curious too. They had us train in VR for all sorts of weird shit and then they put us on surveillance."

Swift just groaned. "You too, Fast? I figured you could hold it in a little longer."

"Yeah, so did I, but the more I wait, the more I think I might've pissed someone in Management off. This isn't even support for wetwork, Swift. This is a joke, and we are worth better jobs than this!"

"And what do you want me to do about it? You know what happens to people who whine at management? They tend to vanish."

"Give us a couple more months here, and we'll be _begging_ the cleaners to come and get us."

"You did _not_ just say that."

"Oh please, you feel the same way."

"Keep talking like that and the cleaners _will_ come and-"

"Guys?" interrupted Quick.

"What?" answered Fast.

"I got movement."

"It's probably just the redhead. She's always last to leave."

"Yeah…and the subject's with her."

"…It's too early in the month and too late in the day for supplies."

Swift punched a few keys on his PDA while he walked over the window. As he saw for himself that the Subject was indeed outside the arcade, his headset beeped, confirming his connection to Management. A pitch-shifted voice answered.

"_Management here."_

"The Subject's on the move."

"…_we expected this. Get your men ready._"

"We're going to tail her?"

"_No, Traffic's low, and she'll spot your van. I'm giving you access to SpySat 4, use it to track her. You'll travel on a parallel course to hers until she arrives at her destination. "_

"Understood."

~O~

In Special Projects B3, Sam and Alan were looking out the window overlooking Special Projects B4, a large, two-storey room above a circular pit filled with the hundreds of machines that made up MORPHEUS. On its glass floor techs were working on an ominous black monolith with a single red light on its surface. That was Bastion, the MORPHEUS computer tower that would house the PMC.

"That thing gives me the creeps," said Alan. Sam just laughed.

"Yeah, me too. Did he HAVE to make it look like HAL-9000?"

As if on cue, Ed Dillinger came in with a component in hand, and began to fit it inside Bastion. He then borrowed a electronic pad, and started making tweaks to the PMC's code.

"Speak of the Devil."

"Come on Alan, he's not that bad. Sure, sometimes I want to punch his lights out and stuff him in a locker. But he's on the level."

"He's too much like his father."

"Last I heard, his father was a talentless git. And if he was anything like his father, he'd have taken over the company long before I ever came along."

"Yeah, but I got a good look at the PMC, and believe me, it's the MCP in spirit. Once that thing is done with MORPHEUS, you can bet ENCOM's LAN is going to be next. And I suspect Junior will have all the keys to control it. Ha, his father would be proud."

"It's either the PMC or the Beast, Alan."

"…Lesser of two evils, eh?"

"Yeah, and while I don't like it, it's a decision that had to be made."

A moment of silence. Sam broke it.

"You think Dad would have been proud of me?"

"Sam, come on…Of course he would be! Look at what you've done for the company. There were some rough times-"

"-I know. I got shot." He pointed to his left side. "Right here."

"But you've given computer technology a much needed boost with the new CPUs. You've made the most advanced OS ever and released it for _free_, and you're renting out processing power thanks to the most powerful supercomputer ever made. Biotech firms are using that power to come up with new cures for the worst diseases known to man. And…and you've got an AI brewing in there, for crying out loud!"

Sam couldn't help but feel like a fraud. Almost all of the above had been inspired or derived from Quorra somehow. Renting out processing power was the only idea he could take credit for.

"I don't know, Alan…all that, and I've only managed to make us richer and few men much poorer. But Dad? He was looking for something, had his eye on a real revolution. Something that would change everything. And Legacy? Legacy was his gift to me, Alan. I never came up with it."

"You never told me that. Is Legacy what you found in there?"

"…Yeah."

Alan put his hand on Sam's shoulder.

"Well, you're about to bring Legacy to the rest of the world, Sam. I hate to speak ill of the dead-

"Alan?"

"-but Kevin had always been a too arrogant for his own good, and he dropped the ball. What happened in the Grid could've been avoided if only he pressed the Sleep button whenever he left it, but he kept things running and he let them get out of control. Everything fell apart, and you picked up the pieces. That's something, Sam. That's all _you_, and don't you forget it."

Sam processed that for a minute. It was harsh, but it was the truth. His father had been a dreamer. He found the seed of a miracle and dreamed of a picking fruits of untold knowledge from a tree, but he did not know how to make that seed grow. He left that task to Sam, and it was by accident that he stumbled upon Legacy.

"_Please don't leave me. Don't leave me alone."_

"_I'll always love you, Sam…always."_

"_Sir, she has to do it now!"_

"_Please, No! NO!"_

Sam chased the memory away. He didn't want to go back there.

"You know Alan, you're right. I've suffered too many times and lost too much to let my dad take all the credit."

Alan cocked his eyebrow. There was something in Sam's eyes that almost scared him. Had he been too harsh?

"MORPHEUS? ENCOM? You can have it. Ed can have it. But Legacy is mine. I won't let anyone else touch it."

He then walked over to a monitoring console and logged in.

"I'm going to make sure Ed doesn't try anything foolish."

~O~

"Well," said Julie, "here we are."

'Here' in this case was the front of the ENCOM building, her former workplace from back when it still had a game development studio.

"Yep," said Quorra. She picked up her bicycle helmet and put it on, and proceeded to get out of the car.

"So…what's with the bicycle helmet?"

"It's got a few gadgets in it. Can you do me just one more favor?"

"Sure!"

"Wait for…" Quorra did some quick math in her head. "…exactly 45 minutes. If I don't come back by then, just drive on home, okay?"

"That's all?"

"Well that and…keep the engine hot."

"…Q, am I a getaway driver?"

"Um, yeah?"

"…That is so _cool!_"

"Ha ha, well, don't get your hopes up, I might just get out of there undetected."

"Well, good luck, in any case."

"Thanks."

~O~

"Management, this is Swift."

"_Management here. I see you're close to the ENCOM Tower."_

"And the Subject is right in front of it. She's going inside."

"_She's probably going to interfere with the Experiment. You're going to have to stop her."_

"By any means necessary?"

A beat. Then: "_As necessary, Quick. Take ranged lethal and non-lethal gear with you, and if there's absolutely no other choice…then kill her. Do not try and engage her in close quarters, either way."_

"What about the redhead?"

"_She might make a good hostage. Take her."_

"Roger that." Swift smiled and cut off the connection. "Alright gentlemen, take some tranq guns, P-90s, stingballs and frags. We're finally going to earn out pay."

"_I wasn't finished, Swift."_

"Sorry sir."

"_Dead or Alive, you're bringing the Subject to us. Is that clear?"_

"Yes, sir."

~O~

_Author's Notes: And we are done with all that exposition! Now, the action begins. Time to watch some action flicks, because I'm going to need some inspiration._


	8. Chapter 7: Entry

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 7: Access

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

_Soon, it will be over, _Ed thought to himself. He had just pressed the confirm button on his datapad, unplugged it, and the automated machinery that maintained the vast MORPHEUS pit whirred under his feet. BASTION was taken beneath the Plexiglas floor, soon to take its place amongst hundreds of other machines. The whole design, Ed had been told, was based on Japanese automated parking garages, which suspiciously fit the Japanese obsession with putting everything inside a vending machine. It was an impressive work of engineering nonetheless, and it made maintenance much easier.

_Please clear central tower dock._

As BASTION was being lowered, Ed couldn't help but think about the past two and a half years: it was 2012, a weekly security scan had revealed what looked like a dormant botnet had replicated itself across 14 percent of Encom's supercomputer, infecting everything from Emulated Systems to Protein folding simulations. The standard procedure was followed, the infection was purged, and it surged back. It was re-analyzed, purged, and it surged back. It always came back, and every time it did so, it got more and more aggressive. This kept going on for months until Ed himself finally tackled the problem. He had been given funding, his pick of any ENCOM employee to help him fix the problem and his own floor in the building. It was, and Ed had to be really honest, the best time of his life. The problem was great in scope, so great that it had forced him to interact with his intellectual peers for the first time in a decade. There had been agreements and arguments, rationality and passion, even laughter and tears.

_Tower 663R loaded into dock B-50._

After a few months, it became obvious that the Beast mutated and evolved too rapidly for any programmer to keep security software up to date, and the concept of a self-adapting security program, the PMC, was suggested.

_Power and network plugs locked in. Startup initiated._

Then deletion became the only reliable way to be rid of an infected program, and so system stability became an issue. The PMC would not only have to keep up with the virus in terms of numbers, but also assume the functions of deleted programs to prevent a total crash. This only compounded the logistical issue of keeping up with the latest viral strain's ability to self replicate. Issues and bugs arose between the PMC's components, and each fix seemed to give rise to two new problems, as if taunting Ed, dooming his efforts into becoming vaporware. But by god, he had conquered each and every single one of them, He had learned harsh lessons from his enemy, and the PMC was finished in record time.

_And soon it will be over. The program is about to be deployed, with an entire MORPHEUS tower's resources at its disposal. It will erase the Beast, and ENCOM's supercomputer will be saved. _

_But what exactly have I accomplished? It isn't like the PMC will revolutionize computer security: it is a massive self-replicating program designed specifically for the high resource environment of a supercomputer. And the Beast itself is a fairly well-kept secret within ENCOM: the general public is blissfully ignorant of the monster under our bed. In the end, no one will care about the mess we cleaned up, or the toil and hardship we endured to do it. The Board will pat my back, grease my palm, and my team will be repurposed to other problems, scattered across the country, their mouths gagged with a Non-Disclosure agreement. Or Quorra could be right; the PMC will bloat, filling up every hard drive and memory chip until they explode, and I'll be fired, sued and disgraced by the entire programming community._

_Just like my father._

_And then there's legacy, the X factor in all this. It could be the Holy Grail of the digital industry, or it could be the digital Apocalypse. Or it could be nothing at all. It was all up to chance, really. _

_But blast it, I am not a gambling man! I leave nothing to chance! I need to get in there. I need to make sure. I've come too far and suffered too much for my magnum opus to fail now!_

_But how? Goddamnit, How? Hacking into Legacy was impossible, and I wouldn't know what to look for even if I got in. What would a Base-4 virus even look like?_

-Quorra- Penny for your thoughts.

Ed was surprised to see that his datapad's screen went black, save for some blue text. He pressed on its screen, and a virtual keyboard came on screen. He began to type.

-Edward- Where are you? What are you doing?

-Quorra- You've got the furrowed brow to end all furrowed brows, man.

_Is she watching me through the security cams?_

-Edward- Now is NOT the time for your pranks.

-Quorra- I'm here to help.

-Edward- I told you to stay out of this! And whatever you're thinking about doing, it's too late: BASTION is booting up, and the PMC will do its job. Go home.

-Quorra- How long before the machine finishes booting?

-Edward- 20 minutes.

-Quorra- plenty of time.

-Edward- Give me one good reason not to call security.

-Quorra- Because they'll never find me and you'll look stupid. Look, I get it, there's no stopping the PMC, but we both know that secret project locked inside MORPHEUS is a security risk, and I know you're just dying you want to get in there and make sure it's not infected.

-Quorra- Well guess what? I can get you in, easy.

-Edward- Can you? And I suppose you want nothing in return for this…favor?

-Quorra- Well, not exactly.

-Edward- Thought so. What do you want?

-Quorra- I want to take a look at that virus.

-Edward- Are you insane? Do you really think I'm going to let you walk away with the most infectious and recalcitrant virus ever made? There's no deal.

-Quorra- Are you going to let the most infectious and recalcitrant virus ever made get even worse? Because if it manages to weather a storm like your PMC, you know it's going to come back with a vengeance.

-Quorra- Besides, what I really want to do is just look at it. I tried hacking in your simulators, but you wiped your samples, you clever little monkey.

-Quorra- Hey! Who knows? I just might be able to come up with an all-powerful vaccine to take care of this virus!

-Edward- Doubtful.

-Quorra- Look, what do you have to lose?

-Edward- Everything, Quorra. I risk losing everything.

-Edward- But only if I do absolutely nothing.

-Edward- What do you want me to do?

-Quorra- Meet me in room 00.

-Edward- Only Sam has access to that room.

-Quorra- You think that's a problem for me? Don't worry, I left the door unlocked.

-Edward- …I see. I'll be there in a couple of minutes.

-Quorra- Right, logging you out.

And the screen went blank.

~O~

Julie was scared out of her mind.

Someone had tazed her, or flashbanged her, or _something, _but she had been out could for a few seconds. When she came to, she was stuck in a headlock with the point of a knife too close to her eye. She heard "scream, and you die." In front of her with two other men covered head to toe with military gear, their heads covered with balaclavas and high tech goggles. One of them, the smaller of the two, was working on a keypad with a PDA. Julie looked around: This was one of the service entrances to ENCOM.

This wasn't a mugging, and it was thankfully not a rape, but what the hell was going on?

"Look, I don't know what you've heard, but I haven't worked here in years. I'm useless to you, so let me go? Please? I promise I won't tell anyone, and I haven't seen your fa-"

The arm around her neck held her tighter, threatening to snap her head off. The larger man in front of her spoke up with a warbled, low-pitch voice.

"How long before you can crack this door?"

"Uh…it's already cracked," The smaller man answered

"…You're kidding. What took you so long, then?"

"Had to make spoof it so that main security didn't notice my hijacking, but it's already spoofed. Hell, the ICE's asleep, man!"

"It's the Subject," the man holding her by the neck said. "Looks like she was in a hurry and got sloppy."

"Sloppy enough to leave a breadcrumb trail of fucked up security, Quick?"

"Hold on…I think I can access main security from here… Yep. There's another keypad that's been bypassed a few floors down. And a few cameras stuck on a loop leading to…wait, another lock's being bypassed. Some kind of high security vault by the looks of it. Heh, she's practically inviting us to come in."

"Well, that's good. We won't have to kill everyone in main security just to track her. Upload her location to our HUDs, and let's go pay her a visit.

~O~

"Hello?" called Ed. Room 00 was very large and very empty, save for some kind of device on the roof. He looked around, seeing nothing but copper walls. Then his attention came back to the device, and he moved in for a closer look.

"Is that… a Shiva Laser?"

'Yep, it is."

Ed heard an electric whine, and turned around. The air in front of him distorted, and a glowing beehive in the shape a person appeared, and then dissolved into an actual person, a woman clad in black leather and with her head covered with a black motorcycle helmet.

"Boo."

"What in the hell?"

"Hey, don't be surprised, I had a hand in making some pretty cool toys for ENCOM. Of course, I kept some of the really good ones for myself."

"…Digital camouflage?"

"…Sure, let's call it that."

Quorra walked past him towards a table that rose from the floor. Quorra set her helmet on the table and rested her right palm on it. A screen flickered to life, requesting a username and password to unlock the system. The screen flickered again, and the familiar windowed walls of text of a Unix-based system appeared.

"This…this place is an attempt to revive ill-fated digitization research, isn't it?"

"…Yes, Sam found a prototype system with semi-functional digitization algorithms his father was working on. He tried to improve and work out the kinks, but he never managed to do it."

"I'm not surprised."

"Hey, he made some pretty good progress, actually."

"We are talking about violating the laws of conservation of energy and matter, here. No amount of coding is going to break them, and certainly not with a laser."

"Anything's possible."

Suddenly, Ed was reminded of the Tron cartoon.

"…We're not, going to use this, are we?"

"Of course not!"

"Oh, thank god!"

"This terminal has got a direct access to Machine 001, the first MORPHEUS tower ever. From there you should be able to have some access to MORPHEUS without Tannhauser watchdogging your every step."

"...A backdoor? You had access to a backdoor into MORPHEUS and yet you still caused me grief by crashing though Kether?"

Quorra smiled. "I was saving it for a rainy day. If I ever got detected using this terminal, Sam would scrap the whole thing. Kether, on the other hand, is open 24/7 no matter what I do to it."

Ed groaned, pulled out his phone and moved up to the console. He searched for an open micro USB port, found one, and connected his phone to the machine. He brought up the virtual keyboard on the console's touchscreen, ready to type. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Well," said Quorra as she moved aside. "You're a more subtle hacker than I am, so I'm just going to let you work your magic. Get past every security node up to this special project and I'll take a look."

Ed loaded his hacking tools from his phone and into the terminal. He then began to subvert Machine 001's security, then accessed its adjacent machine, and that machine's adjacent machine, until he finally arrived to Legacy itself.

"You'll need to find the Rosetta program."

"The what?"

Ed sighed. There wasn't much point in being all that secretive anymore. "Legacy, that's Sam's special project. It is utterly alien to everything else inside MORPHEUS. It's a completely different programming language: the only way it can make sense of what it is observing inside the supercomputer is if a program is translating for it. Logically, the opposite should be true: if a MORPHEUS program were to interface with the Rosetta, then it could make sense of Legacy."

"…it observes MORPHEUS' activity? Why?"

"…to learn, apparently."

A window popped up, with what looked like a list of files… only, the filenames were written in what could be best described as alien script.

Quorra whistled. "Stranger and Stranger."

Ed was disappointed. Strange alphabet aside, he expected the insides of an AI to look more…impressive.

"I'm hoping the Rosetta would have a filename in English, or would have code written in English inside of it…But Legacy's got a labyrinthine set of folders and subfolders."

"Tried inputting a search? Maybe just one letter or even a number?"

"That window just isn't accepting any input from the keyboard."

Quorra took a deep breath. "Okay…let me try this."

"What are you-"

Ed's voice faded as Quorra's right hand made contact with the terminal and electricity ran through her fingertips and her brain shut off nearly all stimuli. She mentally dove in only as deep as the terminal itself, wary of losing her consciousness inside the nearly infinite complexity of MORPHEUS. There she began scanning (or rather, making the terminal itself scan) each and every file, a task that became more and more futile as she realized the sheer complexity of Legacy. There were billions of small programs, each less than a kilobyte in size, constantly interacting each other like a swarm of insects.

_No…that's not right…more like cells. In a body._

She spotted bits and pieces of the latin alphabet in several programs, and she could feel herself getting closer to the goal. But then, she could feel a presence. It gave off the warm feeling of familiarity, like an old friend… and yet it emanated the terrifying aura of an angry giant. And then it felt as though every single file inside Legacy _knew_ she was there. _Staring_ at her_. Pointing_ at her.

**WHO ARE YOU?**

Quorra did not hear nor read the words. They were put there in her mind, like the memory of a traumatic experience.

**DON'T LOOK**

**DON'T TOUCH ME**

**GO AWAY**

So few words, and yet they assaulted her mind with an incredible force. The anguish was incredible, and it took every ounce of will for Quorra to pull her hand away from the achine. She nearly lost her balance as she backed away in terror, gasping for air.

"Oh god! Oh…"

"What in the hell? What did you just do?"

"I think…" Quorra took another deep breath. "Maybe…either Sam left some really messed up ICE just for me, or that Legacy thing is _alive._"

"Is it infected?"

"I don't…"

"Quorra, this is important! I have to know!"

"I don't know, alright?"

A dozen other questions formed in his mind…and they all died when he noticed a red dot dancing over his jacket.

~O~

"Don't move, Hands in the air!" shouted Swift. He saw the Subject turn around to face him, her hands most certainly not in the air. He could see her tense up, like a cat ready to pounce. Swift moved aside, letting the Subject take a good long look at Fast, his hostage firmly within his grasp.

"Try anything, she dies."

Swift saw the shocked expression on the younger, bespectacled man turn into a grim determination. It took Swift a moment to recognize him as Ed Dillinger Jr (damned high tech goggles).

"Step away from the machine."

Ed complied, his eyes trained on Fast and the hostage. The Subject, though, refused to move. He raised his P-90 submachine gun, painting her forehead with its laser sight.

"I am NOT fucking around, here, lady! Away from the machine, now!"

Quorra moved, and Swift kept his distance from her, remembering those pictures Management sent him. Ed's presence here bothered him, too. Wasn't he supposed to be elsewhere? After ordering him and the Subject to get on their knees and Quick to secure them them, He put his finger on his headset, signaling the higher-ups.

"_Management here."_

"Sir, we've cornered the Subject."

"_Did she interfere? Has the PMC been halted?_"

"Dillinger's here. I could ask him."

"_Dillinger? What is he doing with the Subject?_"

"Don't know. Just as surprised as you are. What do you want me to do with him?"

"…_Interrogate him as you see fit, but don't kill him. I'll be listening."_

"Roger that." Swift waited until Quick was done cuffing and disarming them. Quick triumphantly held up an Eletrolaser pistol from Dillinger's jacket, much to Swift's surprise. He let his weapon hang from its strap, and put on his electric knuckle dusters.

"You know how this works. I ask questions. You answer them. You don't answer, I beat the shit out of you. Understood?"

Ed was indignant. "Who in the hell are you people? How did you get past security? Who do you work for?"

Swift loved it when they didn't comply. He held the little bastard by the collar and clocked him in the face, electricity cracking on his flesh for a split second. It had hurt, Swift could tell Ed's lip was starting to bleed, and his eyes lost focus: his glasses had fallen off.

"_Try not damaging his brain, please? It's more valuable than you'll ever understand."_

"Wrong answer. Let's try again: Is the PMC still good to go?"

"…Yes," Ed answered through gritted teeth. "The machine's booting up as we speak."

"_Then what was he trying to accomplish here?"_

"What were you two up to, then?"

"I can't answer that."

Swift propped Ed up and punched him in the gut.

"Yes you can."

"We were dealing with a potential security threat!"

"Not good enough!" This time, Swift pushed his knuckles on Ed's abdomen, letting the charge burn his skin. Julie started crying.

"Please! Stop hurting him!"

"It stops when he gives me a real answer! Talk!"

"…I don't know what's in there! I can't answer you!"

Swift only buried his electric knuckles deeper in Ed's flesh. To the geek's credit, he didn't scream. Swift was curious as to how much more he could take when Quick finally spoke up.

"I can answer for him: They were checking out something called Legacy."

Swift was kinda pissed. He was starting to enjoy himself. Yes, he was going to slit Quick's throat one day. He dropped Dillinger like a sack of potatoes.

"It's right here in the logs."

"_That terminal has access to Legacy? Swift, I want to see this."_

Swift walked over to the terminal, ordering Quick to work his magic on it (basic training never really covered compsci). All he could see was a whole bunch of alien text.

"Management, can you see this?"

"_My god, yes! We've got hundreds of data miners and malware scouring Morpheus for a way in, and now you've found one! You and your men are due for a very, significant bonus."_

Swift had no clue what a data miner was, but he did know what a bonus meant for a Company soldier, and he really, really liked it."

"_How big is the file? Can you upload it to your gear?"_

"Quick, can you upload it to your PDA?"

"Hm…not all of it. I've only got a 125 gig capacity on this thing."

"That's a lot, right?"

Quick rolled his eyes. "…Yeah, Swift, it's a _lot_, but this Legacy thing is about a hundred billion times that. I could set up a connection with Management's computers, but we'd need a keep a secure connection up for _weeks_, man. We'll get found out."

"_No matter, a 100 gigabyte sample is more than enough. Tell him to start downloading, now!"_

"Management wants a sample. Grab what you can."

"Roger that." Quick connected his PDA to the terminal's and began typing commands. He had some issues to work around, but he managed to start a transfer.

~O~

Quorra was quietly warping the rolling lock on her plasticuffs with her fingers, careful not to snap it outright and risk alerting the three stooges. She quietly thanked that this "Quick" fella was apparently a gentleman: he hadn't frisked the small of her back. If he had done that, he might've found her collapsed disk.

She was armed, and she was about to get free…but then what? "Swift" was keeping an eye on her while "Quick" was downloading the strange files, with a hand on his silenced submachine gun. She was good, but she was pretty certain his trigger finger was quicker than her glorified Frisbee throwing. And then there was Julie. The big man had decided he was tired of holding her in a chokehold, kicked her in the back of the knee, and cuffed her, too. She was out of immediate danger…but she would still be very much at risk if Quorra acted too slowly. She needed a distraction. Something very loud and very shocking.

As if reading her thoughts, Ed whispered something:

"Five…Four…Three…"

"Swift" had very good ears, they both found out. He drew his weapon, and walked over to them.

"The fuck did you just-?"

Something exploded, and "Quick" was screaming. His left hand was mangled and burning. "Swift" turned around at the commotion, and Quorra saw her chance. She withdrew a chunk of programmable matter that, activated it, and slashed with the resulting glowing chakram at the man's head. To his credit, he reacted to the noise of the weapon activating, just in time to bring up his gun to protect his face. The gun was damaged and useless, but it wasn't cut in two.

_Damn, those Belgians make good guns._

Thinking fast, she kicked him in the knee. As he collapsed, she flipped, kicking him in the head whilst gaining momentum to throw her disc at the large man. He barely had time to draw his gun before the disc cut away a large chunk of his skull. Julie was horrified at the gore, and shut her eyes.

"You bitch!"

'Quick' was pointing his new electrolaser at her, holding it with his good hand. She could hear the whine of the capacitors charging. Feeling that he was aiming for her abdomen, she quickly started a Tricking routine to confuse his aim. She jumped towards him and spun, a blue beam of crackling energy missing her by an inch. She landed on one foot, letting the momentum flip her forward. Another stream missed her head. She was within kicking distance, and let her momentum power a sidekick that swatted the weapon away. 'Quick' drew his knife, but Quorra could hear her disk coming back to her. She caught it with her left hand, and slashed, severing the hacker's good hand. He screamed, and fell on his knees, cradling his stump.

"FUCK! YOU CUNT! YOU CUT OFF MY HAND!"

Quorra was about finish him off when she heard Ed shout. "Behind you!" Surely enough, 'Swift' was charging at her with a knife. She raised her disk and slashed down, severing the blade from the handle. He kneed her in the gut, but she was barely phased when she slashed again. He proved to be swifter, though, when he caught her wrist with his left hand, twisted and brought his right elbow down on her humerus. It wasn't enough to break her arm, but it was painful enough to cause her to drop her disk. She wasn't out of the fight, though, and took advantage of her flexibility to bring up her right foot to his face. It phased him enough to let go of her arm, but not enough to rob him of his senses. In fact, he was getting very, very angry. He charged at her before she could regain her balance, and slammed her into the terminal. Then he tried to strangle her.

She heard the whine of an eletrolaser pistol's capacitor charging.

~O~

Ed was trying desperately to aim the electrolaser at Quorra's assailant's back. It was unbelievably awkward to aim a weapon when both his hands were bound behind his back. He pressed the button on its side. The unmistakable whine of its charging caught the attention of the attacker. With no time for a better shot. Ed hoped for the best and pulled the trigger.

Lighting arced between the two struggling bodies, rendering them unconscious… and then something went wrong. He could see Shiva laser on the ceiling activating. It was painting targets left and right. A look of horror dawned on his face as he realized what was happening: in a few moments, a beam of light was going to vaporize them all in a futile attempt to catalogue each and every particle in their body for storage. Only he knew that it wouldn't work: Gibbs files had been clear on the fact that people were just too complicated, and the inevitable data loss would result in their deaths.

_I killed us all. That electrolaser shot must've done something to trigger the digitalization process. Oh, god, I killed us all._

Julie was staring at him, bound and helpless, wondering what was going on.

_Julie. I'm so sorry._

That was his last thought before the world distorted, and the light took him.

~O~

_**Author's notes**__: If you're wondering what tricking is, it's short for "martial arts tricking", a combination of acrobatics, gymnastics and martial arts. Anis Cheurfa, who portrays Rinzler, is a trickster. Quorra, being a veteran of the Game Grid, knows how to trick, although she's definitely not quite as good as Rinzler. She got better at it over the years, though._

_Programmable matter is…well, pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It has the ability to alter it's shape, density and even optical properties via digital input. This is apparently in the works in real life. ENCOM, of course, figured out how to make the stuff practical. You can safely assume that's also how Quorra's disc functions in the real world. Once thrown, it constantly scans its surroundings. If it's headed for a live target, it harden itself into a monomolecular edge to cut. If it's headed for a wall, then it softens itself to bounce. _

_ICE, if you're not a Shadowrun nerd, stands for Intruder Counter Electronics._


	9. Chapter 8: Ishtar

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 8: Ishtar

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

"_**Nobody**__ denies me."_

_The man seized Quorra by the throat._

"_Bring me Ishtar!" Soon enough, a siren clad in white appeared, carrying a sphere. It opened, and Quorra could hear something…crawl inside._

"_I reserve this for special occasions," he said, as he reached inside the sphere with a pair of thongs. " It's a flawed augmentation program, you see? What it is meant to do, it does wrong. So very, very wrong."_

_He produced a dark blue metallic leech, grabbing it by the tail. It was the size of a cigar, and it had a small expressionless face made of bone…or ivory, Quorra couldn't be sure. She was more focused on the fact that the small face had a pair of long, curved claws and tendrils where its ears should have been, and they kept looking for something to grab onto._

"_I save it to break the recalcitrant ones. I put it inside of them, and it gets to work, corrupting every line of code from the inside out. In less than 500 picocycles, the screaming starts. Just after a nanocycle, they beg me to take it out…and a few moments after that…well…"_

_He held it over her face._

"_Open your mouth."_

_Quorra kept it shut tight._

_He grabbed her jaw. "Open. Your. Mouth."_

_Quorra held fast._

"_Suit yourself. The eye, then." _

~O~

…Quorra woke up to the sound of…cheering? She thought it was cheering, but the noise felt so distant it might as well have been a whispering electric motor. She tried standing up, and just barely succeeded as the world spun around her. Her chest was on fire, and she could feel something crawling inside her heart, and a steel collar choking her. Her skin felt wrong…like it had been stretched out and folded over her body. She looked at her arms: they were covered in a dark blue material, sectioned by deep gashes. Energy flowed through the gashes, pulses of blue light coursing through circuitry at an even, slow rhythm. There was what looked like disk mounts just under her left elbow, much to her confusion. Metal spaulders adorned her arms; they flared away from her shoulders, revealing them bare...only she realized quickly that her bare "skin" was made of the same stuff as her arm coverings, only glossier more rubbery. She looked down to see her torso and legs outfitted in similar fashion.

_Am I wearing a long skirt? What the?_

The skirt ended just below her knees. It was made of a black, lightweight cloth, with a shimmer not unlike silk, the insides were a dark, bloody red, with a texture that felt like Velvet against her legs. It was cut in the front, making a wide strip of cloth with a bone white pattern of squares at the end.

A klaxon bellowed. A monotone, female voice declared herself even more loudly.

"**ATTENTION COMBATANTS. GAMES WILL BEGIN IN THREE NANOCYCLES**."

The cheers got even louder then.

"**BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM THE ARENA MASTER, JARVIS."**

_Wait, who?_

"_PROGRAMS! Today, I have a special treat for you. The recent outbreak of Rebel filth has proven to be a great boon to the rosters of Arenas all over the Grid! So much so that I can now offer you an ORGY of pain and derezzing for the very first time in decicycles! On the bottom level, I offer you Tank Slayer! TWO DOZEN debugger programs taking on a mighty armored beast! On the Mid level, no less than THIRTY simultaneous Disk War duels! And on the top level, ooooh, the top level. I have found us something wonderful indeed!. For the very first time, SOMEONE had the processes to bid for this Arena's top spot. THAT'S RIGHT, PROGRAMS! ALL OPTICS ON THE SPHERE! FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN THREE CYCLES, SOMEONE HAS STEELED HERSELF AND COME FORWARD TO CHALLENGE OUR CHAMPION."_

_Sphere? Challenge? What is he talking about?_

Quorra took a quick look around. She was, indeed, standing at the bottom of a glass sphere. She could spot seams here and there, recognizing the hexagonal patterns of a Disk Wars court. In the middle of the sphere floated a metallic cube. Silvery circles were lining its edges.

_Oh no. No no no no no this is wrong this can't be the Grid Sam told me the Grid was unrecoverable no this can't be happening! Julie! Ed? Oh god where are they?_

"_PROGRAMS! I present to you…" _

The cube's circles turned out to be screws, and slowly rotated away. As they did, the cube itself began to unravel into smaller parts, revealing a silver armored figure clad in white in a fetal position. The cube derezzed, and the woman stretched out her limbs. A large ring of gold grew out of her back and floated just above her head, with what looked like twelve small glowing knives orbiting. Disks were mounted on her elbows. They detached, floating towards waiting hands.

"_Arena 009 Champion…"_

Quorra realized that the champion had no eyes, or even a nose. All she could see was a mouth crowned by a jeweled face, quivering as if she was about to cry. It opened, and a sound of anguish, as if a thousand women and children were screaming in unison reverberated throughout the sphere. White veins of energy streaked her body.

"_BANSHEE!_"

_Oh crap. This can't be good._

"_LET THE GAMES BEGIN!"_

A klaxon rang. Banshee started her assault almost immediately. Energy coursed through her arms, wrapping her disks with white fire, and one after the other they were thrown directly at Quorra. She flipped away, avoiding the derezzing hexes. Much to her shock, the hexes adjacent to the broken ones were beginning to crack and derezz, leaving her with barely a moment to dodge again.

Landing on her feet, Quorra reached for her disk. It was stuck, much to her shock. She pulled and pulled, but it would't budge.

_Oh come on! That's not even close to fair!_

The blades started chasing after her. She ran, only to feel a dozen bursts of heat on her back. She turned around to see the flying blades had transformed into lightguns, not powerful enough to bypass her armor, but they were distracing: she screwed up one her jumps, and a disk narrowly missed her head.

As Quorra ran, dodged and weaved, she realized that the entire shell emitted its own gravity field: she could run all over the glass wall, giving her of space aplenty to maneuver, but without cover from the disks and lightshots, and a weapon to fight back with, it would only a matter of time before Banshee got a lucky shot in and won.

_I need to jump high enough to get inside that gravity dead zone she's in. But how? I don't have a Rod to rez in a light jet, and there aren't any jump pads anywhere!_

Yet another disk throw narrowly missed her, causing seven glass hexes to shatter in a thousand pieces. Before the glass rezzed back in, Quorra saw the shards fall towards the ground, the actual, real ground outside the sphere. They were eventually caught by the wall's gravity, and curved away, falling into the glass to be absorbed.

_That's it! Ha, I've got it!_

As Banshee's disks made their way back to her, Quorra ran towards the top of the sphere, placing her opponent between herself and the ground. The lightshots stopped harassing her, probably because the floating gunbits needed to recharge.

"Come on! I'm right over here! COME ON!" Quorra taunted, waving her arms. Banshee looked up at her with a snarl and soon enough, a burning disk came at Quorra. She sidestepped out of the way, the glass shattered beneath her feet, and as true gravity claimed her body, she grabbed the burning disk. She grunted: the energies of the disk tried to eat away at her hand, and the pain was considerable…but it was worth it, she was armed, she was headed closer and closer to her enemy and by Flynn, she was going to end this. Banshee threw her second disk, but Quorra swatted out of the way, rendering the champion defenseless.

Or so she thought.

Five of the floating blades rushed at her from several angles, and Quorra was helplessly freefalling. Unable to dodge them, she felt sharp metal bury itself in her body. The sensation was cold and painful, her energy bled out, and she would have fainted if not for the sudden shock of being seized by the throat. She dropped the disk, its momentum slowly pushing it towards of the bottom of the Sphere.

Banshee snarled and growled, her mouth dripping with disdain. She opened it wide, revealing an endless black void surrounded by blackened teeth, and letting out the same, blood-curdling scream from when the fight began…only Quorra was now right next to the source, and her head felt like it was about to explode.

_No…I can't let it end like this…_

_**Don't worry. It won't.**_

A feeling of heat surged from within Quorra's chest, and her strength returned. At once, she grabbed at one of the blades buried in her body, the one stuck in her abdomen, and pulled it out. Armed once again, she buried it inside Banshee's mouth. Then she pulled it out, and she stabbed her again, and again, and again, and Banshee simply would be quiet.

"Shut! It! Shut up! Shut your filthy mouth you **cheating bitch!**"

Banshee's skin began to fragment, her energy veins began to flicker and die. The golden ring faded, and both she and Quorra fell. That didn't stop the stabbing, and when both of them finally landed, Banshee had served as a cushion, derezzing on impact and leaving Quorra alive. But not for much longer: warning messages flashed across her eyes. She was bleeding out energy at an alarming rate, and soon there wouldn't be enough to keep her stable.

She was doomed. All this and she would die of energy depletion, with the roar of the crowd easing her into the void. It was too much: she had to laugh, if only a little weakly, to fight off the despair.

She saw something slither on ground, amidst the pile of pixels and voxels that once made up her opponent: a tentacled silver leech.

_Huh. That looks familiar._

_**Indeed.**_

_What? Who said that?_

_**I did.**_

_Who are you?_

_**I am what gave you strength at the last moment. I am what saved you from your doom.**_

_Ha-ha…So much for that. I'm still leaking energy. _

_**Ah, but my sister there is just bursting with it. And so very ripe with raw data. **_

_Where are you going with this?_

_**Devour her.**_

_What?_

_**Devour her and be saved. Devour her and live. **_

_...I don't know, I'm too far gone._

_**Then act quickly, before your indecision derezzes us both.**_

Quorra stared at the creature for a moment. It was so…pitiable, a simple little creature doing what it can to get away from her. It was if she knew what she had in mind, what she was about to do…But it was slow. So very, very slow…

_**Devour her. NOW.**_

Quorra grabbed the leech, and bit into it. It had a hard shell, and chewing through it was tough, but eventually she was rewarded with a sick, anguished screeching noise and a coppery sweet taste. Quorra was shocked at how she enjoyed the flavor: it only made her want to chew faster and faster.

_**Aaaaah…Yes…You have no idea how long I've waited for this.**_

Quorra swallowed the whole thing, and she felt sick: her skin crawled, her muscles shifted, and white hot glowing veins surged throughout her body.

_**Feed me my sisters, and I shall make you invulnerable…**_

Her flesh pushed out the remaining blades, and her skin mended immediately. She could feel her energy reserves refilling…growing even.

_**Feed me my brothers, and I shall make you strong…**_

She could feel her muscles getting heavier, her armor getting denser. A small Rod appeared on her right arm, lining her ulna. Memories of a hundred lifetimes of duels, free-for-alls and shameless murders rushed her mind, but she could retain almost none of them. Like half-remembered dreams, a bird constantly escaping her grasp…

The shifting stopped, and she noticed Banshee's disk at her feet. She grabbed it, and slotted it on her left elbow mount. Almost immediately she could feel the contents of her very being overriding that of another. It was screaming in her mind, not wanting to fade away into emptiness…but the code was without remorse, and it was overridden. The disk's silver and white morphed into black and blue, declaring its allegiance to its new master.

A klaxon rang. Pieces of metal of various shapes, like the contents of a tetris puzzle, rezzed around her, then tried to imprison her. Quorra resisted almost immediately, pushing against the cubic shell that would be her prison. She was slowly losing ground, however.

_**Feed me my Father...and I shall make you GLORIOUS.**_

Quorra's heart surged again, this time stronger than ever. Energy pulsed within her veins, and exploded outwards, leaving Quorra intact but shattering the cube.

_**My name is Ishtar.**_

~O~

_**Author's notes**__: Yeah, Ishtar is totally voiced by Claudia Black. You may know her from games like Dragon Age playing Morrigan, and Admiral Daro'Xen in Mass Effect 2._

_Hopefully by now things have gotten interesting for you, dear readers. __ I hope my prose didn't get too purple there, at the end. Thing is, I found that besides conversations, my writing is so terse and to the point that it can get kind of bland and boring. I'm trying to remedy that, a bit._


	10. Chapter 9: Wraith

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 9: Wraith

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

"Whoa! I didn't know I could do that!"

"WARNING. COMBATANT 7 HAS COMMITED AN ILLEGAL ACTION AND MUST BE SHUT DOWN. DISPATCHING GUARDS. INITIATING CONTIGENCY."

Quorra's elation was cut short by a sudden burning sensation around her neck. The collar, which has barely bothered her before, made its presence felt with a surge of pressure and heat. Her breath at risk, Quorra grabbed on to it with both hands to break it in two. It worked all to well, and her relief was quickly replaced with fright as the unmistakable whine of a light grenade charging emanated from both broken halves of the offending ring.

_Exploding slave collar. Of course._

Quorra threw both halves away on the ground, the small explosions' shockwaves washed over her. She was made of sterner stuff than the sphere, apparently, as the blast shattered the ground beneath her, letting her intact form freefall into the Disk Wars section of the Arena. She cursed herself for her shortsightedness just before her legs impacted with the topmost court. To her surprise, her legs handled the impact quite well, and she landed without trouble.

_Ok, Quorra, time to gather your thoughts a little. The last 8 hours feel like a disjointed mess, you're back on the Grid somehow, and for some reason you're in an arena outfitted with some kind of power armor. And Guards are coming after you. And you have a voice in your head. And it made you eat a fat worm. _

Quorra took a deep breath, allowing her mind to filter out the cacophony of the arena. She was quickly assaulted with a mess of fragmented data, her memories of recent events. She took control of the stream of data, slowing it down, trying to make sense of the images. The only thing she could make out was being attacked by three men in combat gear, Ed being tortured, and Julie being held hostage. And then there was nothing but static mingled with scambled images.

_Julie! Ed! Oh Flynn, please tell me we were in the same batch! _

The Disk Wars section of the Arena, Quorra observed, was a mess. The 30 courts were constantly moving around like pairs of dancers of a ballroom floor, which made for a confusing show. How any spectator was supposed to make sense of the mess, or why these duels were running simultaneously with the main event in the Sphere was a mystery to Quorra. It also made trying to find two duelists amidst 60 nearly impossible from where she stood. Deciding she needed a close look, Quorra jumped from court to court, peering at the combatants inside. They were incredibly tough, with thicker armor than she remembered in her own days in the Battle Grids. The contestants were taking hit after hit, sections of their armor derezzing. She finally came across a duel that caught her eye. A program clad from head to toe in a brightly glowing purple suit reinforced with jagged sections had just prevailed against his opponent. A triangle, not a disk, returned to his left hand. He moved unnaturally, occasionally glitching out then moving as if his power cycles were overclocked. She had just landed on the glass ceiling of the court, and he noticed her.

"YOU!" he screamed, throwing his Polygon at her. The glass shattered, but it missed its mark. It nonetheless managed to smash its way through the glass, and a sickly purple glow ate away at the edges of the hole, widening it. The Polygon returned in his hand. Deciding that the glitching program had gotten her attention, Quorra jumped down to meet her attacker.

"YOU CUT OFF MY HAND!" he pointed his right arm at her: it had definitely been cut off at the wrist, but a bladed prosthetic took the place of its hand. Quorra's eyes widened. She _had_ cut someone's hand earlier, and it wasn't in this world.

"And you're one of the thugs that attacked me and my friends! Who are you? Who do you work for?"

The User flickered and clutched his head, screaming with a distorted voice. When he recovered his senses, his eyes glowed with purpose: Murder. Quorra withdrew her new disk from her elbow mount, felt its weight, and took a fighting stance. The Polygon flew at her with remarkable speed and, remembering its acidic properties from earlier, she dodged, taking no chances with blocking. The weapon impacted with the glass behind her, returning to its master. True to Quorra's expectations, it left behind a glowing purple stain that ate away at the glass, causing small fractures that only branched out further and further.

_I need to finish this fast, or there won't be a court left to stand on!_

The User made another throw, again aimed directly at Quorra. She dodged, effortlessly.

_Good thing he's a complete amateur at this game. _

She waited until a another Disk Wars court passed under them, and threw a curved shot upwards, aimed at the Hex in front of the User. She had put a counterspin on it, insuring it would bounce almost straight up and then down. The Disk grazed his back, insuring he could barely react when the hex he stood on shattered. He shouted, fell…and vanished into thin air.

_Are the safeties on?_ Quorra thought it would be problematic if they were. While it meant Ed and Julie were going to be safe, it also meant they'd be stuck in the waiting area with a crazed Hacker out for blood. _Wait, if they're on, how did-_

Her thought was barely completed when she felt claws scratch her back. She turned her head, finding a purple glow in the corner of her eye right eye. She immediately executed a back kick only for the glow to vanish before her foot could find its mark. She looked around, hoping to find the telltale parallax distortion of Daemon subroutines at work, but could find none. She could hear footsteps and clattering echoing all around her, as well as the laughter of a maniac.

"I don't have time for this! Come on out and face me!"

"Oh, I'm going to take my time with you, I think."

He appeared, spread out on the far wall like a spider, his right arm combined with the Polygon to form a vicious clawed hand. She immediately threw her disk at him, but the flaming sting on her back caused her to falter at the last second, and the disk bounced harmlessly below her intended target, which vanished with another fit of laughter.

"That shit hurts, doesn't it? Well, I've seen the thing at work, see? It'll never stop, it'll never wash off, and it'll eat you alive…But just before it's done, you know what I'm gonna do? You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna find your little girlfriend and fist her with my right arm while I make you _watch._"

_Ok, is that how you want to play? I can play that game too._

"Wait, you're just going to fist her? That's it?"

"That's it? _That's it? Weren't you listening? I'm gonna make you both PAY for cutting off my hand!_"

"Yeah, I remember that hand, that tiny, soft little hand. You'd think you'd be pleased: that replacement is more than adequate, it's a damned improvement. Stronger. Bigger."

"What the fuck are you going on about?"

"I'm starting to think I took out a lot more than just your right hand. I think I cut off your favorite wanking wrist!"

"Shut up!"

"Oh! I'm actually right! I actually hit a nerve, didn't I? And THAT's why you're so pissed! Your right hand was the closest thing to the touch of a woman you'd EVER feel on your limp dick, and now your options are a prosthetic blade or a giant, metal, poisonous CLAW."

"…And man, I'd love to see you try and please yourself with that freakish, mutated limb. I could sell tickets! Welcome to Q's house of horrors! Tonight purple boy pops his weiner like a gr-"

"I told you to SHUT UP!"

"Yeah, you're right, it wouldn't be much of show right? I mean, there has to be a reason why your boyfriend calls you…_Quick?"_

Quick reappeared just above her and let go of the decaying ceiling. He swiped as he landed, blind with rage and screaming like a berserker. He missed, but swiped again and again, finding nothing but air. Quorra laughed: this was actually kind of pathetic. All she had done was insult his manhood and then he had completely lost his mind.

_That's right, come at me stupid, telegraph all your moves you sad, sad little man._

"STOP LAUGHING!" Quick screamed as he swiped for her head. She ducked, and the side of his adbomen. To her surprise he didn't bleed or shatter, but there had been a shower of sparks and it had hurt: she could see it as he staggered backwards and gave her an opportunity to finish the fight, which she took. But she had forgotten that the user was quick, and he dodged to his left. He struck again, this time to grab her head with his claw, and Quorra seized his wrist.

What happened next took her completely by surprise: She was just about to follow up with a Disk strike to the face when the Rod on her right forearm sprang to life, extending into a footlong blade that pierced the User's metal wrist, causing it to slowly fragment and derezz. Quorra struck at the wound with her Disk as she pulled the User's wrist, causing him to fall forward minus a hand (again). Before the Claw could derezz, she buried it in her opponent's back. He derezzed shortly after that.

Quorra looked at the mess of pixels and glowing purple blood drenching the Polygon. She cursed herself: she had hoped to take the man alive or question him before he died. There was, she soon concluded, no other way it could have ended. He attacked first, threatened to rape her friend, and had completely lost it, mad with rage.

_Besides, mooks don't know squat. _

The stinging at her back vanished. Curious, she used her Identity Disk to query her subroutines, and found that the mother of all auto-patchers had already fixed the damage and purged the corruption. It took a lot out of her energy reserves: she was down to 72 percent capacity. Sighing, she docked her disk on her arm mount. The fight had taken too long, and she despaired. There was no way Julie and Ed could last against the intensity of the Disk Wars. She saw a few other programs in the Courts come to their ends, and despaired even more. She hoped now to at least find a body, if only to know for sure.

The she heard a scream. It wasn't the warbled, echoing scream of deresolution, but a shout of despair. She strained her ears: it was a girl calling for help.

~O~

Julie blocked another Disk hit, her arms straining to take the impact. She knew she should attack, she even somehow _knew_ how to attack, but her only protection had evaporated when she took a hit to the chest. The Disk, she knew, was the only thing standing between her and a painful death, and she held on to it tightly.

_This isn't VR. I KNOW this isn't VR. It's too real!_

Her opponent, a man three times her size with an armored rubber suit painted with teal strips of glow in the dark paint. He was laughing, shouting how fun and easy this was. Julie begged him to stop, told him that she just wanted to go home and that if he'd just let her go she wouldn't tell anyone about this. He didn't care. He just kept on attacking. And Julie blocked. The man laughed again, saying how she should just give up, throw down her disk. She blocked again. She could feel her arms giving out and tears welling up in her eyes. She was getting weaker, and weaker…

_Please, God, just let me go, please just let me go… I don't want to die…_

Then came the final attack. It broke through her Disk, and struck her helmet. She fell on her back as the world spun around her, robbing her legs of strength. She tried to get up, and saw her opponent run at her. She knew this was it. She knew she was going to die. The man jumped on the hexagon floating between the two glass pods, and time slowed down as he landed just in front of her, his disk in the air, ready to come down. She closed her eyes, shielding her face with arms, hoping the end would come quickly.

She heard glass breaking, and then a grunt.

Julie opened her eyes. The man had glowing metal triangle stuck in his neck guard, deeply enough to have cut something vital. He gurgled, and fell on his side. And then he began to disintegrate. Slowly.

Julie backed away, screaming. She couldn't take it anymore: people just didn't die right in here. She then heard something hit the glass roof above her, and then another armored figure dropped in from the gap between the pods.

"Oh god, please! No! please, Don't kill me!"

The figure got closer.

"Please, no! I won! SEE?" She pointed at the disintegrating corpse. "I won! IT MEANS I CAN GO, RIGHT?"

The figure leaned in and grabbed her by the shoulders. Julie was scared out of her mind and screamed.

"Julie! It's me! Stop screaming!"

"Who?"

"Quorra! It's Quorra! look at me, for crying out loud!"

Julie froze, and looked up. It was indeed Quorra, and relief washed over her. She embraced her, crying.

"Oh thank god! I thought you were going to finish me off!"

Quorra returned the hug "You're alright…!"

"NO I'M NOT ALRIGHT!" she shouted as she backed away, slapping Quorra on the shoulder. "I WAS KIDNAPPED! I SAW MY BROTHER GETTING BEATEN HALF TO DEATH! SOME CREEP HAD ME STRIPPED DOWN AND PUT ME IN A BLACK ONE PIECE SWIMSUIT AND THIGH HIGH BOOTS! I'VE GOT A COLLAR AROUND MY NECK! I THOUGHT WAS GOING TO GET SLICED OPEN BY A FRISBEE! THERE'S A MAN BEING EATEN ALIVE BY GLOWING PURPLE TERMITES RIGHT OVER THERE AND **I AM BLEEDING FROM THE HEAD!**"

Quorra smiled sheepishly. "…feel any better now?"

Julie was out of breath. "...Just a little."

"Right, hold still."

Quorra pressed a few buttons on Julie's collar. It loosened opened, and Quorra threw it in the opposing pod, where it exploded.

"…Oh my god, that thing was around my neck?"

"Yeah." Quorra said, as she ripped off a strip of cloth off her skirt. She made a make shift bandage out of it and wrapped it around Julie's head, staunching the bleeding.

"Hey, how come you get a skirt?"

"_Really_, Julie?" She walked over to the decaying man, and took the glowing triangle out of his neck, causing him to completely disintegrate. "All this and you're jealous of my _skirt_?"

"This _thing _I'm wearing leaves like, nothing to the imagination! It's snug all over! And what are you doing?"

Quorra held the Triangle in front of her, and a hologram appeared over it. She touched it, tweaking a few symbols and talking to herself at the same time…she didn't seem to mind the triangle burning her hand.

"Oh…Quorra, it's EATING YOU."

"Hm? Oh, I don't mind...mostly encrypted or scrambled, but it's mostly usable…just need to set this whole sector to read-only, reset the user permissions and…done. Turn around. This is a better weapon than your broken disk."

Julie did so, and she felt a sting on her back, just like when those pale girls in white mounted that disk on her back. This was different, though: besides giving her a slight rush of electricity, it also made her skin crawl. She looked down at her gloves, the fabric had changed from dark gray to dark metallic purple, and her glowing strips went from red to pink.

"Oops."

"What do you mean, oops?"

"I might've messed up your RGB settings. Look, it doesn't matter. Security will be coming soon! Have you seen your brother anywhere? Did he get processed with us?"

"He did! I remember the creep saying something about how skinny he was…and outfitting him for something called heavy debugger armor."

"…did you say debugger?"

"Yeah…? Is that important?"

They both looked down at the Tank Slayer level, and their eyes widened.

~O~

Ed slotted another vial of energy into his arm cannon (just like the other players did) as he crouched behind a chest-high wall (one of many, he noted), hiding from the Quadrupedal walking tank and its many sponson-mounted laser machine guns, dual tank guns, and multi-disk launchers. He really, really hoped it wouldn't use the launchers again: they had a tendency of flushing him out of cover, and he was not a fast runner.

He would win this stupid game, and he would find out how to get out of this VR sim, and he would make everyone responsible for this prank pay.

Especially Quorra. Oh yes, he would make Quorra pay.

~O~

_**Author's notes. **__And another action laden chapter, with even more on the way. Hope you enjoyed it._

_Some folks have told me that the previous chapters had felt disconnected from one another. I guess it's mostly because I switch wildly between very different perspectives too often. I'll try to dedicate two chapters per scene, at the very least, from here on in._

_Thoughts? Feel free to critique! Anonymous commenting is on!_


	11. Chapter 10: Behemoth

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 10: Behemoth

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

Ed peered out of his cover, hoping to find some kind of weakness on the mechanical monster that was busy decimating the other players. Its back was exposed to him, but he couldn't see anything that he could damage to hinder the war machine: no heat sinks, no exhaust pipes, not even a single glowing bit or an arrow that spelled "AIM HERE". He had tried aiming for the leg joints, but between their constant movement and the huge, half-meter thick _walls_ of armor bolted on the forelegs, the shots were too difficult.

_Better some damage than no damage at all: almost all tanks have inferior rear armor._

Ed charged the cannon that covered his right forearm, aimed, and released the payload. It hit the main body right in the rear, causing the whole machine to stagger for a moment. Ed smiled, although he really wished his helmet's GUI could give him more feedback than his own health bar, a countdown, and an ammo indicator. He had no idea just HOW much damage he did.

_780 seconds left. A few shots remaining, no reloads. I'm going to have to-_

The chest high-wall that he had been using as cover exploded in a shower of gravel, and he was blown away by the shockwave. Quietly thanking his armor for absorbing the impact, he scrambled to his feet and tried to run for cover, only to hear the roar of the walking tank's main snub guns charging up. They were aimed right at him.

_Damn. Oh well, this game must have multiple rounds. Hate to wait to respawn, but…_

Somebody tackled him from the side, and he could feel a cannon blast whizzing by his feet, then another close to his arm. He had landed just behind another (conveniently placed) chest high wall, and someone was lying on top of him.

"Hi," said Quorra. "I don't suppose you've seen a User anywhere?"

"Gmmph hmpph Mmmmph!"

Quorra double-tapped something on the side of Ed's helmet, and he gasped as it unraveled, exposing him to fresh air.

_Argh! You can't talk in these things! _

"You! Get off me!" he shouted, pushing her away.

Quorra leaned against cover and peered out. By the sound of explosions, Ed assumed it was busy massacring other players…a golden opportunity to fire a few quick shots into her back. The glowing bullets seemed to fizzle out harmlessly when they hit her armor, although she did look annoyed, surprised, and very angry.

"Hey! You shot me in the back!"

"Just be thankful they turned off friendly fire!"

"Friedly F-? What the fuck, Ed?"

"When this game is over, you and your friends are going to face some MAJOR consequences! I don't care if your ex is my boss, I don't care if he's richer than Croesus himself: There is no way I'm letting you get away with kidnapping!"

"…Wait. You think _I'm_ responsible for THIS?"

"It's just typical of you! I remember every single goddamned pranks you pulled, each one crazier and more humiliating than the next and I've tolerated those but this? _This_? Getting men dressed up as mercenaries to beat me into unconsciousness and strap me into a VR chair? This crosses the line!"

An explosion rained pixels on them, and they ducked.

"…I _killed_ one of those men and _maimed_ another trying to save you! You saw it!"

"I also remember you turning invisible, executing gravity defying acrobatics and used a guided Frisbee as a weapon! Frankly, I don't trust anything I saw! You could have staged it!"

"Alright, alright, fine! You're right, I've put you in a crazy, dangerous prototype VR game, and everyone in R&D is laughing his ass off right _now_!"

"I _knew _it! Those-"

"-And you know what else? Unless we destroy this giant killer robot, you'll be stuck in here for hours!"

"Hours?"

"Hours! Now, they wouldn't have put you up against this thing without some small way of hurting it. What have you got besides that arm cannon and grenades?"

"…Grenades? I don't have any grenades!"

Quorra grabbed something on his thigh; one of many small disks that covered his armor's cuisses. She held it up to his face so that he could have a closer look.

"Those are grenades? I've had explosives strapped to my legs this whole time?"

Quorra just rolled her eyes. "You are _such_ a _newb_."

Quorra pressed buttons on the grenade, bringing up a holographic menu.

"Have you got anything else?"

"No, at least I don't think so."

She sighed, just as she finished altering the grenade's settings. "How much ammo have you got left for that gun?"

"Not much," Ed answered, and Quorra grabbed his weapon with both hands, and closed her eyes. It red circuitry went from red to bright teal. "What are you doing?"

"Cheating. You've got one thousand units of ammo now. Also, I've got a plan." She primed her grenade and shouted "INCOMING SMOKE!" before throwing it at the metal monster. It exploded just above its turret, showering the war machine with a multitude of small shards and a heavy smoke that covered and blinded it. The few remaining other players popped out of cover and began shooting charged shots into the smoke.

Quorra took the rest of his grenades and clamped them onto her sides. She looked at his neck, and began to press buttons on the collar that had been bothering Ed since they pushed him out into this madness. Another player had told him not to touch it, or it would explode.

Before he could protest, Quorra smiled triumphantly as the collar came off, and she gave it to him.

"You know what that is?"

"I have some _explosive_ idea, yes."

"Good, then keep it, it might be useful. So here's the plan: I'm going around to attack it from behind, you keep shooting at it. Blind fire if you have to, but you keep its attention on you!"

"Are you-mmfff hmff!"

Quorra had tapped just under his ear, causing his helmet to cover his whole head again.

"Don't worry, your cover can take a few more hits before it crumbles!"

And she ran off.

Ed stared, bewildered. He couldn't believe he was going along with anything she was saying, and briefly considered letting the tank crush her. _It's not like it would kill her_,he thought, _and it would teach her a lesson. _He then decided against it, as it would more likely cause her to throw a fit and extend this…torment for a while longer.

_She might force me to go against an army of aliens with nothing but a crowbar, or something._

He peered out and waited for the smoke to clear until he could barely make out the tank's form, allowed a shot to charge, took aim, and fired.

_And besides, I hate to lose._

~O~

Quorra had found cover some distance behind the walking tank, and prepared herself. Ed was making a good distraction thanks to his overloaded gun, and the giant couldn't ignore him. Her thoughts dwelled on Julie: Quorra had told her to stay put in the Disk Wars court until she could lower the glass pod without risking it getting blown up by the tank. "See that red holo-button?" she had asked Julie. "Once I take care of this monster, press it and the whole court will come down.

_This is nuts, _Quorra thought. _A crazed monster program and a mutant user, I can handle, but a walking tank? Come on!_

Briefly, the memories of the Monitor came to mind. She had bore witness to his combat prowess once, when Abraxas had been unleashed and CLU began his coup. He had taken on a Tank on foot, and his tactic had been simple: get on top of the turret (thus making its firepower useless) and smack the hell out of it with a disk. Getting in close enough was the real trick to it, but thanks to good use of cover and claiming the high ground, he had pulled it off.

The bad news was that there was no high ground to be taken from a tank with forelegs at least 9 meters tall. The arena's floor was flat and featureless save for chest high walls all over place acting as cover, and it was surrounded by flat walls taller than the war machine itself, and these were further topped by force fields. There was nothing she could use her Tracer skills on to get the drop on it.

That left scaling the machine itself, and that meant climbing the forelegs. The problem was that the armored legs had nothing to hold on to, not to mention that their movements were always slight, ensuring that the long, slightly curved plates they bore as armor were always almost straight up. Those were the bad news.

The good news was that Quorra had several grenades with magnetic clamps, and each of them was a centimeter thick: plenty for a good solid grip. She hated the idea of wasting good explosives, but she stood a better chance destroying the tank up close with her disk than anything else.

Ed had fired six charged shots at the machine, causing it to stagger and getting its full attention after it had finished off a group of three other programs. The tank began making its way to its aggressor, and Quorra ran up to its rear right leg, readied a grenade, and leapt. To her surprise, she had managed to clamp on halfway up the armor plate.

_Huh, I must have a Y-amp on or something. Oh well, I might only need just 4 grenades to scale the rest. I should be able to make the last 2 useful._

She mantled over the foreleg, threw her two remaining sticky grenades at the two most sensitive spots she could find, and withdrew her disk. It was time to finish this.

~O~

Ed heard an explosion, and leaned out of cover to see that the tank was struggling with its rear legs. Quorra had apparently managed to ruin two joints, but it hadn't been brought low. Then he saw her on the tank's turret, holding up a black edged ring wreathed in white flames. Then she got on her knees and began smacking it against the tank.

_Oh my god, She's hitting a tank with a burning Frisbee. _

_She's hitting a TANK. With a FRISBEE._

_If this works, I swear I will shoot my-_

Ed saw several small hatches pop up, and a multitude of disks being launched in the air. He remembered those.

"_Incoming AP Cluster Disks!" _shouted a nearby player, completing Ed's thoughts. Noticing that the sponson guns had stopped suppressing him, he took aim at the falling disks and fired. Other players joined in, some of them altering their arm cannons to fire buckshot.

"_The Disks are headed for that blue player!"_ shouted another. "_Shoot the Disks down!"_

"_The team killer? Shouldn't we be shooting her?" said another._

"_Hey! She's killing the Behemoth, isn't she? If she derezzes we're all fragged!"_

Ed was surprised. _She's on the opposing team?Oh, we're red she's blue. Classic. Why is she helping us, then? Odd._

The few remaining members of the red team kept on firing at the salvo of disks, but one made it past their hail of fire. Quorra simply smacked it away with her burning ring, causing it to fly off and explode harmlessly on the arena wall. She renewed her assault with vehemence, and the blue lights on the tank began to flicker and die. The machine began losing balance, several small parts across its entire body erupting in showers of sparks. Ed moved in for a closer look.

_Wait, how does savaging the turret destroy everything else? Bah! Video game logic, I'll never get used to it._

It fell and hit the ground with a loud crash. All its light died as the crowd cheers roared to life. Quorra jumped down, and took a breather as Ed approached her. She looked up at him, smiling and exhausted.

"Whew, that took out a lot out of me."

Ed disengaged his helmet. "Had your fun? Then can we _please_ leave this game?"

"Not so fast, we still need to get to the gate."

"The _gate_? You said that we'd be logged out once the walking tank was defeated!"

"Yes, yes I did, but-"

Another program, still taking cover, shouted at them. "_What are you two doing? The timer's still counting down!"_

Ed and Quorra stared at the tank, certain that it was dead.

"It's not derezzing…" said Quorra, horror dawning on her face.

"_You didn't derezz the pilot!"_

The turret's hatch popped off, and from the opening rose another player, clad in what Ed could only describe as power armor. He was huge, almost two and half meters tall, covered head to toe with armor plates. Quorra armed her disk and threw it at him, while Ed followed with a barrage of fire from his arm cannon. None of their attacks so much as bothered the giant.

The pilot slammed his fist into the turret, tearing through the ruined armor and pulled out one of the snub cannons. He handled it with such frightening ease: it was quickly trained on Ed, charged and ready to fire.

Time seemed to slow down. As the barrel erupted, Ed felt two hands push him away with such force that he was propelled five meters away, feeling the heat of the blast on his feet all the way. He got up, reactivating his helmet and took in the scene. Quorra was down, several meters away from where he had been, her armor riddled with glowing fractures. The giant had just loaded another shot and was ready to finish her off.

Then a glass pod crashed on top of the giant, shattering into a million little shards. Ed was once again grateful for his suit, as he would have been torn apart by the glass hail. He looked up, seeing a figure streaked in glowing pink lines some twenty meters above him. The giant, who had fallen from his perch on the turret, stirred, and Ed despaired as he saw that he was still intact.

_72 seconds left. There is no way I can whittle him down to nothing in that little time._

Ed walked towards his enemy charged his gun.

_No._

Ed fired, knocking the giant back down.

_NO. _

Ed fired another charged shot, getting closer.

_I am not going through all this again!_

Ed fired again, this time hitting the cannon, rendering it useless.

_I am not going to be humiliated like this! Not again!_

Ed found himself being slammed into the ground. The giant had gotten up, and used his broken weapon as a battering ram, and pinned Ed and his gun-arm to the ground with it. The giant was crushing him now, laughing as his helmet receded. It revealed a hard grinning face veined with blue circuitry.

"I'm going to enjoy this, little program! You've been nothing but an annoying little gridbug since the match started, and now I, GOLIATH, WILL-"

He couldn't finish his sentence as he felt something clamp around his right elbow. It was Ed's slave collar, and he punched it with his free hand. The collar triggered, shaping he explosion around the least protected area of the giant's body, severing his arm.

The gigantic tank pilot screamed and howled, backing away, nursing a glowing stump. Ed struggled to free himself from under the tank gun's considerable weight, which seemed to get lighter and lighter until it vanished, burying him under a pile of glass shards. He rose, only to be met with the intense stare of the giant, his eyes filled with hatred. The giant charged at Ed, but the smaller man smiled. He was ready: his gun was charged, and his opponent hadn't put his helmet back on.

The crowd cheered. Goliath, master of the Behemoth, fell apart into a pile of glowing ash, screaming.

~O~

_**Author's notes: **__Well. This was a rather hard chapter to write. Needed to create a sketchup model to plan out the scene, too! Well, at least it's over, and now I can get back to unfolding the plot._

_Not quite sure where I should take this next, seeing as Quorra is out cold and neither Ed nor Julie have any clue as to what to do or where to go. We'll see._


	12. Chapter 11: Questions and Answers

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 11:

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

_There's a red woman in red water in a white bathtub. Her face is pale and empty. I cry and I beg for time to turn back, to undo this, to make this not real. _

_Please don't leave me oh god please don't leave me alone I'm so sorry_

_Men in black come, and they ask me to let her go so that they can put me in a cage like the animal that I am. All I see is red and blood and I now I want them to be hurt, to feel even an ounce of my loss._

_They fire._

_There is a tree._

_It has no leaves, and yet it is still alive. It still grows, new branches sprout from the trunk and the branches fork into twigs. It is small, planted in the middle of a gray plain with no grass or even dirt, just bare rock. Life, in defiance of death._

_There is an old man in a black cloak, on his knees, praying to the tree. His face is cracked and wrinkled, irrigating a flow of tears. _

"_Please, please… he is my only son," begged the old man. My heart sings. I know that voice._

"_Flynn?" I call him. But he does not hear me. I want to run to him, to touch him, but my legs are air and my hands are mist._

_This isn't right._

_Flynn stayed behind. Flynn is unrecoverable. Flynn is gone._

_Flynn is dead._

"_This is a dream…It can't be…"_

_The tree is on fire, and a hundred eyes in the dark sky open and stare at me._

**Yes. It is. But it is not yours.**

"_Who's there? Who are you?"_

**You trespass into my soul and demand answers from me? You shall have none!**

"_I don't understand._** "**

**You are not welcome here, thief! I see you, all of you…and what do I see where your soul should be but a tiny void! You are a doll, starved for the dreams of others, waiting for a child to pick you up and give you a soul!**

"_That's not true!" _

**Thief!**

"_I'm not here to steal from you!"_

**Liar! You came here seeking dreams! MY dreams! You've found only nightmares!**

_The flames engulf me, and vanish. The tree and the old man are gone, replaced by a city on fire and in ruins. The sky is red, and the ground is covered in ash._

_Ash, streaked with blood._

_I see Sam, impaled on a spike, his body quivering as he tries to draw breath in as his blood bleeds out. He is naked, bruised, and cut. Alan is next to him, sharing the same horrible fate. And so many others, some long dead, others still dying._

_Sam opens his mouth. _

"Run…"

_Before I can say anything, a snake springs from the ground, its open maw snapping shut around Sam, leaving only his head dangling on the side of its lips. The snake grew wings, and lowered its head to stare at me. Sam, still living, utters the same words again. _

"Run…"

_And I do._

_My naked feet find only muddy ashes, and every inch I travel stretches into infinity. Hands, more bones than meat, reach out and grab my ankles, and I'm terrified, so terrified that the snake will catch up and devour me. One of the hands seizes my ankle, and I fall into a pit walled with dead faces, staring and accusing with empty voids where their eyes should be. The pit goes on forever, and I sink into darkness. _

_And all the fear and horror fades away into it._

_I feel arms wrap around me, cradling me like a mother, and I hear the soothing hushes of a sultry voice, a comforting lover's…_

"_Hush, darling. You don't have to run anymore…"_

_I knew that voice._

"…_Ishtar?"_

"_Yes, t'is I. Now hush, go to sleep. I shall keep the monsters at bay."_

"_I'm scared… so scared."_

"_And you have every right to be…but in here, in this darkness, I shall be a torch for you, a flame to burn and repel the horror and the madness, a light to guide your way…_

_She held me closer, and I could suddenly make out the glow of her skin. _

_She was naked and blue, freckled with gold. Her hair was pale and wild, her head was crowned with a pair of ram horns and a headdress shaped like a star with eight points... She was so strange, and so very beautiful…_

_She held me closer still, and kissed me…_

_And everything became sensation._

~O~

Quorra woke up gasping, her eyes darting left and right, expecting to find herself face to face with a cannon-wielding giant. Instead she found a ceiling of cracked obsidian crisscrossed with several humming energy conduits. She tried looking around, expecting to be surrounded by security force fields. Instead she found a door barricaded by several boxes…and a snoring head of messy, glowing pale pink hair on her left cheek and a weight across her chest.

_Who the-? Oh, Julie. Borked her RGB settings. I remember now._

Looking down, Quorra saw that the weight on her chest was Julie's arm, resting protectively on her body. She gently lifted it away, causing Julie to stir and moan, but otherwise didn't cause her to wake up. Julie's hand was clasped firmly around the triangular weapon Quorra had looted from the crazed hacker. It had changed: while it used to be shaped like a unilateral triangle, it now extended into an isosceles one, and split down the middle. It looked like a ray gun.

Or a Blaster.

_Now, what are you doing with that?_

Quorra's assumption that they were being imprisoned was promptly shot down: she checked her arms and back for her weapons, and found them still moored to their docks. No one was stupid enough to leave a prisoner armed. Reassured, she got up from what she quickly realized was a makeshift bed made out of bundled clothes. Next to it were a dozen empty vials of energy. Looking around some more, Quorra was quietly horrified to see three silhouettes made out of pixels on the ground, the remains of dead programs, their voxels long dissipated into nothing.

_Stranger and stranger. What happened here?_

Something else caught her eye: amidst the ashes was some kind of knife like device with a hollowed-out handle. Its glow was flickering, indicating it wouldn't be long before it derezzed. Curious, Quorra picked it up, hoping to use her ISO talents to figure out its function. What she received instead was a rush of data the likes she had never felt before.

In fact, it was a vision:

~O~

This had not been a good millicycle for Spooler. It had not been a good centicycle, all things considered: He and his two friends, Bat and Dir, had endured endless toil as Data Pushers in the New Empire for the past one hundred cycles, and their reward for being too good at their job was to be sent down in the tunnels to find Grid Bug hives. Before they could get the necessary upgrades and modules, the riots had flared up again, and the trio couldn't believe their luck as the Recognizer took a bad disk hit before it could take off, causing its power cycles to interrupt long enough for their restraints. They weren't so lucky to have their disks unlocked from their mounts while running through the chaos, the confusion, the screaming and the derezzing, but they had eventually chanced upon a convoy of vehicles headed straight for Sector Carina, home of the Industrialists, where freedom awaited.

Only it didn't.

The Industrialists, wary of potential infiltration by Castor loyalists hiding amongst the hundred thousand or so refugees, decided to erect firewalls around a portion of their territory and corralled everyone into the "Quarantine Zone", as they liked to call it. Conditions were terrible: there weren't enough sleep mode docks around, so that meant almost everyone was constantly burning away energy. Energy rations were distributed every millicycle, apparently just enough for everyone in the Zone to get by, but some folks were simply greedier than others, and they were usually bigger and armed with combat disks. Processing centers were taking their sweet time with the length process of decompiling and recompiling programs to check for potential daemon sleepers, after which they would allow clean program into Carina proper. At the rate things were going, everyone was going to starve to death, save perhaps for the various gangs that were already forming around the just cause of beating the voxels out of smaller programs to get their dinner.

Bat, as always, took charge, and managed to get his hands on a couple of energy extraction tools (Spooler really didn't want to know how he got those…things) and got the trio into the business of draining unwary programs ("it's them or us," Bat justified). They started with sleeping the sleeping ones, then managed to work their way up taking down a former (if slightly outdated) gladiator. Bat had become more confident and more greedy, and had heard about a pair of female programs shacked up in the basement of a Shell Mod store. One of them had crashed pretty badly, and their apparent guardian, a gladiator program in a debugger suit, had been drafted into a bughunt in exchange for pay. They were vulnerable, ripe for plucking after getting their rations (the sick ones got extra), the few Monitors that patrolled the Zone didn't give two bits about the store, and it was late enough that most bystanders would be too frazzled to do anything (programs were avoiding going into sleep mode for some reason). When they got into the room, only the crashed program was there. It was perfect.

Spooler couldn't believe the amount of energy this program had. They had already extracted nine vials from her body with an energy fluid concentration the likes of which no one had ever seen before, and yet her self-patching subroutines were still repairing her battle damage. Dir and Spooler got nervous: only Champions in the arena were supposed to have that much energy, and they both said so. Bat just smiled and said it was all the more reason to get every single drop so that they didn't have to deal with her later. Spooler was about to protest, but decided he'd much rather live than starve to death: he had seen what it was like, and really didn't want to go through that experience. With the champion dead, they'd have enough energy stocked up to…hell, buy their way through the Processing Center, or at least get bumped up on the waiting list. They'd gone through so much, Spooler couldn't bear the thought of slowly derezzing in a no-good, low-priority place like the Zone simply because he had some issue with draining some voxel-hungry killer. No, Bat was right, they were going to do this, and they would live.

Then the door opened, and the other girl screamed.

"What are you doing?"

"Frag!" Bat swore. "Dir, I told you to watch the door!"

The girl, some comfort program with pink circuitry (like the ones they have in Bootes), reached for something on her back. Spooler was frightened, expecting a disk, but was relieved when he saw a triangle instead. The triangle, much to everyone's surprise (especially the girl's), got longer and split into a two-pronged fork. The girl held it in front of her with both hands, and it was evident to the three drainers that she obviously didn't have any combat subroutines installed: That wasn't how one held a Disk _or_ a Rod, and Bat just laughed as she shouted demands to let the Champion go.

"Guys, take care of this, would you?"

Spooler got up and did his best to get the girl's full attention, While Dir approached her from her right. It worked, and Dir tried to wrestle the object away from her.

Then Dir started screaming as his hands started to dissolve, exposing his power conduits to the open air, before they burned away as well. Spooler lunged at the girl with his extractor, but she brought her tool up and squeezed the handle, and a small part of his chest blew away in a flash. And another. And then another.

He fell on his back, dropping the extractor, feeling nothing. He could faintly hear Bat shouting "Shareware bitch!" before rushing at her. Bat was not a very big program, but he was quick, and before long the two were grappling with each other.

Spooler closed his eyes, and reopened them as he felt the sudden crushing weight on top of him and saw a mess of glowing pink hair settling right in front of his face.

Then Spooler became Julie and Julie was straddling Bat and stabbing at his chest, crying all the while. With every stab of the blade, energy fluid gushed out of the handle, its full cartridge having popped off.

With every thrust, Julie became Bat and Bat was being straddled and stabbed by Julie and all he felt was the horror he had inflicted onto others as he drained their very life from their bodies while they slept.

~O~

"What the _fuck_?" Quorra thought to herself, dropping the blade. "What was that?"

_**That, child, was a memory.**_

_How? That thing doesn't have a memory buffer!_

_**Death leaves its mark on EVERYTHING, child. The feelings called forth when you surrender to it, or fight it, are some of the most powerful there are. They taint the will, and the worlds, this one more than any other, is SHAPED by will.**_

_This world is shaped by Code! Data! Commands! You can't just decide to have an experience written onto a tool! It doesn't work that way!_

_**And yet, there you were, living the painful last moments of two separate programs, and the glorious moment when your companion overcame her fear and conquered those craven dogs!**_

_Glorious? She was scared out of her mind! _

_**Don't worry, she found her comfort, eventually…In any case, why the surprise? You could always glean knowledge from devices. I merely increased your sensitivity.**_

_You're the one doing this? You're messing with my head? And the dream, was that you, as well?_

Ishtar said nothing.

_What are you? _

_**Your companion wakes. Won't you comfort her?**_

Truly enough, Julie began to stir.

_This isn't over._

~O~

Julie's eyes opened, gladly letting the light inside them, burning away an unpleasant, half-remembered dream. And yet, she still felt like going back to sleep: she was never a morning person, and nothing short of a cup of coffee could make the drowsiness go away.

She suddenly realized that Quorra wasn't where she should be, and fear caused adrenaline to surge through her body. She shot up, eyes wide, looking around frantically. She didn't have to look long, as Quorra was kneeling beside her with a worried look on her face. Julie sighed with relief, and embraced Quorra.

"Oh, Q! I thought…I though you might've gotten kidnapped! Men, horrible men with…syringes! They tried to drain you dry!"

"I know…And I'm so sorry you had to do what you had to do."

At this, Julie let go and pulled away.

"You know? How?"

Quorra produced one of the blades the men used on her.

"I found this, and I saw their remains. I put two and two together."

At this, Julie brought her knees to her chin, ready to cry.

"I didn't want to kill them…I never wanted to hurt anyone…"

"I know," said Quorra, as she put a hand on Julie's shoulder, and discarded the blade.

"No, you don't know! I wanted to run! I wanted to save my own skin! But something made me stay and fight, and I don't know what it was!" Tears began to stream down on her face.

"Julie…"

"All I know is that it didn't come from me, okay? I'm not a soldier!" She waved her Blaster, for emphasis. "I never shot anyone in my life!" she yelled, throwing the weapon away.

"I don't want to have to kill anyone anymore…I want to go home…"

Julie felt herself pulled into an embrace, and could feel Quorra's heartbeat against her cheek. She wept.

"Hush, it's okay. I'm going to get you home, I promise. You'll be solving my server problems in no time, and we'll find new ways to ruin your brother's day, alright?

Julie was surprised at the warmth that seemed to emanate from Quorra: it pulsed with each beat of her heart, and with each pulse she could feel her sorrow drain away. It felt so nice; Julie wanted nothing more than to stay like this forever.

"Oh god," she said suddenly.

"What is it?" asked Quorra.

"We've been sleeping next to corpses."

Quorra couldn't help but grin. "Yeah, we were."

"That's so gross." Julie sniffled. "I really should've cleaned that up."

"I'll take care of it. You just rest up, okay?"

"Okay," Julie sais as she pulled away. "Quorra?"

"Hm?"

"I have _so many_ questions."

"You and me both. The last 11 hours or so that I can recall are a jumbled, disconnected _mess._ I could use some answers."

Julie watched as Quorra put her fingers on the ground, tracing each and every outline of the piles of ash. The outlines glowed, and some kind hexagonal keypad appeared on the ground. Quorra typed some commands, causing icons to appear, disappear or morph, until three progress bars appeared and started their course from left to right. As they did, each pile coalesced into a tiny cube.

Once the cubes were done forming, Quorra picked them up and looked for a place to put them away. Finding none, she went to a corner of the room, and traced a square on the ground. The section of ground rose, and became a table. Quorra set the cubes on it.

"What did you just do?" asked Julie.

"I archived the data. Compressed it."

"Like a zip file?"

"Pretty much."

"Oh. Ok."

Julie still stared.

"Quorra?"

"Yeah?"

"_Where_ are we?"

Quorra laughed. "I suppose the ball's in my court on that one. You remember the TRON cartoons?"

"Yeah…but this can't be-"

"-It is. Well, sort of."

"You mean to tell me that Kevin Flynn really was shot by a power-hungry AI with a disintegrator ray and had his molecules recombined inside the computer, only instead of being trapped inside hard disk he was transported in a digital universe where programs are people and they throw disks at each other for fun?"

"Yep."

"And then Kevin took Sam there, and then Sam took you later on...?"

"No, that's not quite it. You remember when I told you when Sam rescued me for a bad place?"

"I remember. I thought you came from Eastern Europe or something."

"Well, welcome to my hometown."

"Oh, don't be silly, that would make you…"

Quorra smiled, and nodded.

"A program? You're a talking program like…like Tron?"

"Not quite like Tron. He was a very advanced Basic. I'm different. An ISO."

"…You're the archive file of an optical disc?"

"err-" Quorra wasn't quite ready for that one. And Julie perked up instantly, seeming to have cast away her all her worries.

"-What of? A video game? You're totally a video game, aren't you?"

"_Julie,_" Quorra insisted, stifling a laugh. "I'm not a video game! I'm an isomorphic algorithm!"

"_Oh!_...wait, what's an isomorphic algorithm?"

"Hoo boy." Quorra sat down, cross-legged, on the makeshift bed. "I'm going to have to start from the beginning."

"I got time!"

"Yeah, I'll try to abridge as much as possible anyways. You see, after Kevin defeated the MCP…"

And Quorra told Julie _everything._ About the beginnings of the Grid. About the miraculous emergence of the ISOs. About Tron. About CLU. About the Purge. About the thousand cycles spent as a guerrilla fighter, about the futile war against a relentless enemy made in the image of the Creator himself. And finally, about Sam, and her escape into the realm of the users.

Quorra didn't abridge anything. It had felt too good to talk about it: Sam had expressly forbidden her to talk about her where she came from or her experiences with anyone but him and Alan, and while she saw the wisdom in that, it meant being dishonest to everyone else she met.

_**Is that all? There ought to be so much more to tell, I would think. **_

_Be Quiet, you! She doesn't need to know everything._

Julie, for her part, listened to everything attentively, and was left speechless, until:

"Wow. That is _amazing!"_

"Yeah, yeah it is. Scary, too, as you've experienced."

Julie's face grew just a bit somber, then. "I've got a couple more questions, though."

"Shoot."

"What makes an ISO special? I mean, miraculous birth aside, what can you _do?_"

"Besides potentially answer the questions of Life, the Universe and Everything? I can pretty much pick up anything and learn how to use it in an instant. Everything from an abacus to a fighter jet."

"Really?"

"That and make slight modifications to my code to take on functions. I could be anything from a data pusher to a system monitor if I wanted to. That's pretty much it."

"And the flaming frisbee and the resistance to tank rounds?"

"Ah. Those." Quorra got up, feeling the stirring in her heart. "I'm honestly not sure. I vaguely remember someone trying to force something in my mouth…"

"Oh god!"

"It's _not_ what you think… more like some kind of upgrade they give to arena fighters to boost their performance. "

"Why would anyone do that?The last thing I'd want to do is give my prisoners superpowers."

"Probably for entertainment's sake: better performance, more impressive fights. And if anyone gets uppity, there were always the collars. My upgrade was apparently bugged beyond belief and I wasn't supposed to survive getting implanted with it. At best, I was supposed to go completely nuts. At worst, de-rezz. And I doubt they expected to deal with a User with any sort of hacking ability: the security on these things was a joke."

"Programs couldn't break free? At all?"

"Not unless they were malware with the specific functions necessary to disable the security. Basics are very capable when they want to be, but when it comes to adapting…they're helpless."

"Oh…" Julie seemed despondent, now.

"Speaking of the arena," Quorra said. "What happened after I was blown up?"

"Well, after I dropped that glass cage onto the pilot…"

"You dropped a Disk Wars court on him?"

"…and Ed shot him in the head…"

"Ed? Really?"

"Can I finish?"

"Oh, sorry."

"Well, after Ed won, I managed to lower my…court? My court into the lower arena. The surviving programs were patting Ed on the back. Even the whole crows was cheering for him, can you believe it? Anyways, I ran up to them, and one of them saw my bleeding head wound and he started screaming and pointing. He kept shouting 'User!' and then all the other players started kneeling before me. It was _weird._"

"Well, Users are considered gods here. And let's face it, they kind of are."

"I figured as much. Then the guards came to take us back to our cells. When they saw we didn't have our collars on, they got really, REALLY mad and violent. Ed fought back, managed to kill one of them, but he was overpowered soon enough. When one of the guards struck me, the other players…well…

"Go on..."

"They came to my defense. Every single one. They threw themselves at the guard screaming 'for the users!' while their collars kept spitting out sparks…it looked like it was painful, Q, but they just kept on fighting until…"

"Until the collars finally exploded."

"…Yes. Ed finished off the remaining guards, and by then the crowd had been riled up to the point where they rioted. I don't know why, I guess they didn't like anyone manhandling their new champ, or, or something. I don't know."

Quorra recalled Spooler's recent memories. There had indeed been a riot, and she got the feeling unrest had been brewing for a while. The guards interfering with a match while everyone had been euphoric with choice violence must have been the tipping point. Julie continued with her tale.

"Ed and I took advantage of the confusion. I had to force him to carry you on his back, and he complained, but he did it anyways. We managed to find our way out: with the guards leaving the doors open behind them, it wasn't too hard. Fighting off hooligans and Guards trying to keep order, that was the tough part. I had to use my…disk? My triangle more than a few times, but Ed was…He was getting angrier and angrier, and kept pulling off one headshot after the next. Each time a guard fell and dropped his weapons, some rioter picked them up and before you knew it the riot had even more momentum!"

"And then you managed to find transportation?"

"It found us, actually. Some disgruntled workers decided to start a motley convoy of ground vehicles, and picked up everyone they could before the guards completely pacify the place, because they always did, apparently. They were taking their chance for freedom in this place called Carina, and when they saw we were armed they thought their chances to break through any blockade would be a lot better if they picked us up."

"I'll bet."

"Oh you have no idea!"

-ooo-

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS! YOU WANT TO ME TO PLAY? I'LL PLAY! AND YOU'RE GOING TO **LOSE**!"

Ed fired another overcharged shot at the flying arch. It apparently hit something vital, and the arch spun out of control, crashing into a building.

"AND WHEN I FIND A WAY OUT, I WILL HAVE ALL YOUR JOBS, AND THEN I'LL HAVE YOUR HEADS SERVED UP ON A SILVER PLATTER! WITH APPLES! IN YOUR MOUTHS!"

~O~

"I didn't know Ed had it in him. I'm impressed!"

"Oh, that's not all."

~O~

The flying arch crashed, then fell on one of the tanks that had been chasing them down the street, right at the front of the formation. And then the wreckages exploded in a shower of cubes and glowing fluid.

"YOU SEE THAT? YOU SEE THAT? THIS IS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU FUCK WITH DILLINGER!"

~O~

Quorra couldn't help but laugh that one. She had seen Ed scowl. She had even seen him angry. But downright furious and bloodthirsty?

"Just…wow. I'm sorry I missed it."

"He was pretty much holding them off by himself, and I was getting worried he'd run out of ammo before running out of targets. We were lucky: I heard other refugees transports were overwhelmed. I was so relieved when we made it to our destination: I thought we were safe, that would get looked after…but…"

"But then they put us in a ghetto."

"Yeah, pretty much. How did you know?"

"If a whole bunch of refugees came in uninvited in your turf, you'd be careful too.

"I guess so. Well, you've got an idea of what happened next: We got meal tickets, as far as a vial of glow in the dark drinks can be called a meal, and permission to squat pretty much every where we liked. I lucked out with this place: Plenty of room of the three of us, relatively private, and the door closes…although it doesn't look like it can lock."

"Where did Ed go?"

"Some men in armor similar to his came by the building, asking for volunteers for a 'debugging' job, with the promise of pay and drink. Since Ed's the better programmer between the two of us, and the medics said you needed energy real bad to power your self-patching subroutines, I volunteered him. They took him on almost immediately."

"That couldn't have made him happy."

"Well, he wasn't, but then he figured that working as a 'pretend code monkey' would give him some semblance of normalcy in all this craz-"

There was a knock on the door. Quorra shot up, readying her combat disk while eyeing the barricaded door warily. She looked at Julie: she was aiming at the door, her hands shaking.

Another knock. Quorra wished she could see through walls.

_Would really have helped out in…oh, a million other situations back in the bad old days. I need to remember to write some new code and integrate it in my processes…_

_**No need.**_

_Wait, what are y-_

Before she could finish her thought, her eyes began to burn, if only slightly. Then the wall and door darkened, and became transparent like dark glass. Several blue glowing figures appeared, some were sitting, others were pacing, but one was waiting intently in front of the door, fully armored with the helmet on, holding a disk in hand.

"I think it might be Ed," murmured Quorra. "But I can't be sure, he's armed with a disk, not a gun. You said there were others with armor like his?"

"Yeah, but hold on."

Julie approached the door, and said "Thunder" out loud.

"Flash," the figure behind the door answered. "It's me, open the door."

"Alright, give us a minute!"

The two young women removed all the boxes blocking the way, and opened the door. What they saw then made them gasp: Ed was standing in the doorway; his armor was scratched, warped and dented, and he was covered head to toe with dried goo.

"We have two problems," he said. "First: this isn't a video game."

"Oh good," said Quorra. "You're up to speed! Because-"

Ed then turned on the holo-emitter on his disk, and a stream of code emerged. Quorra couldn't quite make out the data: it was a mess.

"Second: The Beast is here."

~O~

_**Author's notes: **__Whoo, that one took months to do. Work was interfering, and the words didn't quite flow out of the keyboard as well as before. _

_Another concern of mine is the tone of this chapter. I don't know how well I maintained it, since I've been at this chapter on and off again for the past couple of months. Hopefully this hasn't felt to disjointed._


	13. Chapter 12: The Ox

Tron Odyssey

Chapter 12: The Ox.

Tron and Tron Legacy are the property and copyright of Disney.

~O~

"No," said Quorra. "No, no. No. NO, no no no no n-Edward? I just found myself in the middle of the most fucked up Arena Match of my entire life: I've had to deal with the mother of all screamers, a hacker (which raises SO many questions by itself), a walking tank, and a face full of cannonball. I just had a nightmare, and when I woke up I got some of kind of horrible vision involving the last moments of some people who tried to rob us-"

"-Someone tried to rob you?" asked Ed, a faint look of worry coming over his face.

"_Let me finish! _We're stuck inside one of the most advanced supercomputer's towers, and it's apparently in the middle of a civil war gone hot. I've got some kind symbiont…worm…thing inside me whispering things inside my head and giving me superpowers (and nightmares). I'm not even sure I can get us home!" Quorra took a deep breath. "I do NOT need you to tell me that we're stuck in here with supervirus on the loose on top of everything else!"

"We're stuck in here with a supervirus on the loose."

"ARGH!" Quorra threw up her hands in the air in frustration. She conjured up glowing hex out of thin air, manipulating it to take on several different shapes and streams of letters, and made a couch rez in next to the small table she had made. She just let herself fall into it.

Ed, who had been watching, did similar gesture and rezzed in a slightly bigger, slightly comfier couch. He sat down, and tried to massage his armored feet, but he just couldn't make the plating bend far enough. At this, Quorra smiled a little.

"You figured out the console commands?"

"A few. Had to, considering what I've just been through."

"You're sure, there can be no mistake?"

"The virus? Positive. Our only saving grace is that it's one of the earlier strains. I could put together a vaccine based on data I have here and from memory. It will take a few hours…but delivering it to the Queen will b-"

"The Queen?" asked Julie. Quorra gave Ed a meaningful, quizzical look.

"Maybe I should start from the beginning?"

"By all means!"

~O~

Ed knew he would not see the familiar comfort and relative sanity of a cubicle and a desktop computer. When the other armored men directed him and several other volunteers to the basement level of what looked like a futuristic police station, he had doubts that this was really a tech support job. When they charitably gave him new grenades and a few vials of red "weaponized energy" ("don't drink it or it will kill you," they said), he just knew.

_They're going to send me to a firefight. A bloody firefight. "Debugging" job, indeed. I'm probably going to have to fight giant bugs, or something. _

With little else to do besides wait for everyone else to receive their gear, Ed pondered his situation. At first he was absolutely certain he has been drugged up and put inside some kind of VR simulation in an elaborate prank set up by Quorra, but now he started to have doubts, borne out of the simple fact that he has not starved to death by now.

He had been stuck in this "Zone" for close to three days, and he had not eaten in all that time. It was entirely possible he was hooked up to an IV drip, but there had been a moment when he had felt weak and ill. At Julie's urging, he drank one of their "energy" rations, and felt better almost immediately. That was odd, but Placebo effects could go a long way to stave off symptoms.

And then there was the level of immersion: Ed simply did not _feel_ a VR helmet on his head, or feel like he was lying on some kind of couch, or feel the needle of an IV drip in his arm. It was possible that he was lying in some sensory deprivation tank, wired up to Sam's so-called man-machine interface…

_I'm making too many assumptions, here. Overcomplicating things. I'm assuming we've made a huge leap in cybernetics. I'm assuming that Quorra is morally dyslexic enough to force someone inside a dangerous, terrifying video game, and that Sam is petty enough to help her do it._

But where did that leave him? The sanest explanation was far too complicated and filled with ifs and maybes, but the simplest one was simply too insane.

_Digitaliztion. Walter Gibbs' pipe-dream. Impossible…too many laws of physics in place…I don't care how brilliant they are: the Flynns aren't gods. They simply can't hack the universe with a few lines of PERL and a goddamned laser!_

Just then, someone tapped his shoulder. Ed turned around and met the gaze of a grey haired man with the strangest, crisscrossing scars he had ever seen. He was wearing armor like his own, only its stripes glowed blue, and it was marked with cuts, scratches and patches here and there. Next to him was a younger man, with sand colored hair, armor completely unmarred, good as new. It was he that spoke first.

"Grey armor, red circuit, it's him."

Edward tensed, wondering if he was in trouble with the law.

"I hear you're a veteran of the Arenas?" said the older man.

"I'm sorry?"

"Logris here tells me you took down the Tank Champion. What was his name?"

"Goliath," said Logris.

"Yeah, him. Did you kill him or not?"

"If you mean the giant with a fondness for ridiculously heavy weaponry, then yes. Was I not supposed to?"

"Bah! No, from what Logris tells me he was murderous piece of shareware. And one of Castor's favorite lackeys. No one here will miss him."

"Then why are we talking about this?"

"You took him down in an Arena. That means his Battle subroutines and equipment Permissions automatically transferred to you."

"…I don't understand. His subroutines are mine?"

"…You mean you don't know?" said the scarred man, who then glared meaningfully at Logris. "You told me he was a veteran!"

"I said he HAD to be a vet!" defended Logris, putting his hands up defensively. "Goliath was monster in or out of a Walker! There's no way a newbie could have derezzed him!"

"Well," said Ed, "To be fair, I didn't do it alone."

The scarred man sighed. "Well, it doesn't matter. You took him down, you get his subroutines. Mind if take a look at your disk?"

"My disk?"

"The one stuck on your back."

Ed reached for his back, feeling for something. He did remember that disembodied voice telling him he would receive a disk, but all that happened was someone sticking something on his back and a crawling sensation made itself known inside his head. Indeed, everyone else had these chakrams stuck on their backs, and he found that he was no exception. He handed it over.

The scarred man held the disk close to his face, and conjured up a holographic representation of Ed's head. He had apparently caught Ed's quizzical expression and misinterpreted it as worry, and assured him he wouldn't "look into his memory buffer", which only puzzled Ed even more. The holographic head made way for a blue segmented ring, portions of it glowing green, some gold. One of them was red.

"Nice ballistics package, there," said Logris, pointing at one of the gold sections.

"Rubbish at disk wars," said the scarred man. "But that's fine, You've got a whole mess of permissions and stability upgrades, and that makes you all kinds of useful."

He handed Ed his disk back, and once it was docked, he held out his hand for a shake. Ed, being polite, took it and shook.

"Name's Norton. I'm putting together an advance team to scout ahead in the Warrens, spot anything nasty in there and report back before the rest of the grunts risk their necks. It's a tough job, and it's usually reserved for the best of the best, but we're short on experienced hands here because of the lockdown."

"I see. And how does that concern me?"

"Not at all if that's how you want it to be, but I'm offering triple rations and one thousand bits for signing on, with a fifty bits per kill bonus rather than the regular fifteen."

~O~

"You said no, right?" asked Quorra.

"Actually," answered Ed. "I accepted."

"Huh. I didn't you'd stick your neck out, not for money, at least."

"I didn't, I did it for the rations."

"Why?"

"I reasoned that my health, simulated or otherwise, depended on those. Julie and I forgot to drink our rations of energy once, and the effects weren't pleasant."

"We didn't forget!" exclaimed Julie, indignant. "You still thought you were in a videogame, said we were just running out of mana or something stupid like that!" She took on a mocking tone. "_Hurr! Let's not bother playing along with this silliness, durr!_"

"Actually," interceded Quorra. "You kinda were running out of mana."

"Huh? Really?"

"Of course, running out of mana here is the same as starving to death."

"Oh. Good thing I can't cast spells, then… or whatever."

Ed cleared his throat. "Can I finish, please?"

~O~

Ed attempted to negotiate a better deal, offering his "subroutines" and "permissions" for a larger sum of liquids and currency, but Norton shot the notion down, saying that Arena subroutines were finicky and laced with security measures that made it impossible to transfer them outside of "Arena Rules". Attempting to do so outside one could cause severe degradation in the copiers at best and total derezzing at worst.

"You want your rations, you'll have to fight."

Ed sighed. He knew railroading when he saw it. He did, however, want to see if he could somehow break that elaborate dialogue tree the programmers had put into this Norton fellow.

"I want five times the standard rations, fifteen hundred…bits, and one vial per kill along with the 50 bits."

Norton laughed. "My offer's standard for any Debugger Ranger. Any particular reason I should give some lucky schmuck who didn't even know the basic rules of the Arena any more than he deserves?"

_He's not walking away. Interesting._

"Because this 'lucky' schmuck, besides being equipped with the best ballistics modules and armor around, managed to singlehandedly keep an entire convoy of refugees safe. In fact, besides Goliath, my kill board includes several dozen guards, 3 of their light armored vehicles, one of those flying arches and the tank it crashed on."

Norton turned to Logris. "Can you vouch for that?" he asked.

Logris sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. "Well, I wasn't in his convoy, but when we crossed the border I did notice his was the largest AND the least banged up… So I suppose he's on the up and up about that."

Norton considered this for a bit, and finally:

"Aw dangit. I can't afford to be picky. I can give you the fifteen hundred bits and the extra rations, but the kill bonus stays the same. There are only so many vials to go around for everyone. We got a deal?"

Ed pretended to ponder the offer before finally reaching out for a handshake. "Make it two thousand bits and we have a deal."

Norton sighed and shook Ed's hand, sealing the deal. "Deal," he said. He then rezzed a holographic PDA. "What's your name? I have to add you to the registry."

"Edward."

Norton typed on his PDA and dismissed it into thin air. "Alright Edward, welcome to Ranger Team Beta." He handed Ed what looked like a small usb flash drive. "Here's your credit chit. It's got the one thousand. You'll get the rest once the warrens are cleaned up, along with your bonuses. Logris?"

"Yeah boss?"

"Take him to the L-APC. We'll be heading out shortly before the Prime Monitor starts the big speech. Oh, and set him up with a Heavy Baton."

"Will do. Come along Edward!"

Ed followed Logris to a large vehicle apparently modeled after a World War 2 era German reconnaissance vehicle (complete with turret), large enough to carry 6 passengers. He took a seat and waited, feeling some dread at going into yet another simulated combat situation…which, suddenly, was dispelled by the idea of the handsome reward he would receive. Ed shook his head: if he had something in common with his father besides ambition, it was definitely greed, and he did his best to control it.

_At least the dread is gone, _he thought.

Logris sat next to him, securing his seatbelts while apologizing that he couldn't find a Heavy Baton (whatever that was) and complaining that he wasn't ready to become the team's supplier and mule, and Ed simply tuned him out, engaging his helmet and closing his eyes. Eventually Norton came along, took a seat, and gave them an impromptu briefing while they were on their way.

The task was simple: Scour and scout the "warrens" for "gridbugs", deal with small groups and report on large swarms and let the main debugger group deal with them…Nothing Ed wasn't told already.

Then Norton conjured up a hologram, a complex maze of pipes and tunnels, layered over a dozen floors. A significant portion of it was isolated and zoomed in on. That was new.

Several red triangles dotted the map, and Norton continued: "But that's not our main objective. We're going to set up a dozen sensors at these coordinates as part of a Gridbug early warning system. Once those are in place, we'll deal with any small group of bugs the sensor net detects, and then we can call it a day and cash in our bits. Any questions?"

No one asked any.

"Good. Ladies, this is the sector that's been assigned to us. I'm going to upload a copy of it on your HUDs. Try and familiarize with it as much as possible. We've only got a little while before we get to our manhole, so get to it. Oh, and one more thing: I'm in charge of this little outfit. What I say goes! You give me any crap or try to cancel on me, I _shoot_ you and you _don't get paid_. Understood?"

Everyone in the car said "yes" and Ed got to task, soaking in as much data as he could. He wondered just how infested the warrens could be if they were offering him as much as 50 bits of currency per kill…but then he realized he had no idea what "bits" were worth in American Dollars.

_Hopefully, they're worth a lot, and those "bug" encounters will be few and far between. They might even be fun._

~O~

"Where they?" asked Quorra.

Ed just let out a long-winded groan.

~O~

Ed Struggled with the mechanical insectoid abomination that was trying to suck out his face right through the helmet. He managed to push it away enough from him to shove his arm cannon in (what he assumed to be) its mouth, and pulled the trigger. In a flash, the monster disintegrated, and Ed breathed a sigh of relief. Norton, Logris and the other three Debuggers (Ed hadn't bothered to learn their names) were in similar situations, but Norton proved to be a crackshot, and eliminated the remaining creatures.

_Why oh why couldn't they just get me started with giant rats?_

"Sound off! Everyone got their voxels where they oughta be?" Norton shouted.

Everyone weakly said their names, and then groaned "yes".

"Alright, secure the area! Logris, set up the sensor!"

The team did as they were ordered, covering the four ways of the intersection. Logris produced a small rod from his backpack and, as always, fumbled with it, relying on the holographic cues, prompts and instructions to unfold it properly into a larger device not unlike a jackhammer. He slammed the device on the ground, past the shallow water, triggering the explosive charge that buried a small spike deep into the floor. Logris lifted the pile driver, and it glowed brightly, then faded away.

"And that's twelve for twelve, Norton. Can we go home, now?"

Norton put a hand on the side of his helmet. "Prime Monitor, this is Ranger Team Beta. Main objective accomplished. Awaiting sensor net activation and further orders."

Ed groaned that those last two words. He hadn't slept in a day. He had to walk through a labyrinthine, dark sewer with little time to rest. He had to deal with a feeling of dread constantly, punctuated too frequently with pants-shitting terror when those damnable bugs crawled out of their holes in the ruined, obsidian stone walls. He was out of grenades and only had eighty rounds left in his gun. He had had enough. And he could see everyone else was weary. They couldn't go on, not without rest.

Finally, Norton spoke up.

"Alright everyone, stand down and gather around. I've got good news and bad news."

_Aw, hell._

Norton conjured up a map of the area from a device in his palm. The team collectively groaned.

"None of that, now! None of that! The good news is that our area is clear of any bugs. We were thorough, and for that the Prime sends his congratulations in the form of an immediate extraction. We are to get to get to this elevator…here…"

An orange triangle lit up, indicating the new objective. It would take, by Ed's estimation, barely twenty minutes of foot travel to get there.

"…and ride it up all the way to the surface, where an LAPC will be waiting to take us back to the Monitor station."

"What's the bad news?" asked one of the debuggers.

"The bad news is that Ranger Team Alpha found a whole nest of bugs, and the main group responded. They're fighting them right now, and they're taking some losses…but they're holding on and they haven't called for reinforcements. Yet."

"But the higher ups think that might change soon," stated Edward.

Norton nodded: "We get rested up, recharge, and we standby until they call for us."

"Well," said Logris, "Here's to hoping they don't, right?"

"Everyone, rest up, have a drink if you need to. We move out in ten."

Everyone got out of the shallow water, collapsed their helmets, and sat down. Logris, as always, stayed close to Ed. He once joked that if he wasn't going to be safe next to the guy who took down Goliath, then safe just wasn't going to happen. Ed didn't mind as long as Logris stayed quiet.

Logris never stayed quiet.

"So, um…what did you do before you got drafted into the Arena?"

"Security."

"…You were a Monitor?"

"No. I designed computer security systems. Firewalls. Encryption keys. That sort of thing."

"Wow! Your user trusted you with a task that huge? You must've been real important."

Ed thought about his many demotions and promotions over the years of Sam Flynn's reign of terror. Though he has a significant share in the company (one percent of Encom stock was nothing to sneeze at), everything Sam suggested usually went through unopposed. Before the Beast came along, Ed simply didn't have the clout to stop Sam's more harebrained ideas.

"I _was_," Ed said bitterly.

Logris chuckled. "I hear you."

Ed took a sip out of his canteen, letting the electric feeling wash over his brain, dispelling some of the weariness away. "What about you? What were you before the revolt?"

"I was a driver for the hardware in one of Castor's Aquifer Plants, deep underground." A slight smile came over his face. "Everyone says I have the worst job ever, watching meters and dials go up and down while turning valves and pulling levers…And I guess they're right, but I never felt that way. It really gave me a good feeling to refine raw energy fluid into something drinkable, provide everyone with sustenance."

"I take it this Castor fellow had other ideas as to what to do with that fluid. You wouldn't be here otherwise."

"Yeah…when Castor rose from the Bin he was quick to cash in old loyalties, and before I knew I was part of the 'Empire' again…That _glitch _kept most of the plants' output for his soldiers and himself, and left everyone else to run with quarter rations. I didn't like it at all."

"Why? It seems to me his so-called empire would run better if he kept his people better fed."

Logris snorted: "Why do High Processes like Castor do anything? Everyone was better off without him around."

Then, Logris leaned in closer to Ed, taking on a conspiratorial tone.

"You ask me, the day the Beast just marched in his bedchambers and fragged the bastard was the best thing that ever happened to the Grid."

Ed blanched. "Wait, what did-"

Norton had gotten up and shouted orders. "Everyone! Helmets up! Weapons at the ready, we're moving out!"

Half an hour later, Beta Team had arrived to the large cargo elevator that. Any other day it would look like a steel cage made out of bars and chainlink fences. Right now it looked like a gilded chariot, ready to take everyone home for a well deserved rest.

And then Norton stopped. Someone was talking to him over his earpiece.

"You're kidding. You must be out of your mind!"

Ed and Logris looked at each other. This couldn't be good.

"You think they need reinforcements already?"

As if hearing him, Norton shouted: "No, we are way too Flynn-damned tired and that objective is way too deep. These men haven't got the experience to deal with what might be down there!"

"Doesn't look like it," said Ed.

"Look, you talk to them! As far as I'm concerned, they did their job! EVERYONE, HUDDLE UP!"

The team complied, and Norton conjured up a hologram in his palm. Instead of a map, it was a miniature version of a muscular man in full medium armor. It spoke up.

"Programs, this is Prime Monitor Anon."

~O~

"Wait, what did you say his name was?"

"Anon. Someone you knew?"

"…No, it couldn't be the same guy. Nevermind, just…just go on."

~O~

"I need you to for a special mission. We've lost contact Ranger Team Delta at sub-level 9, close to the Aquifer layer."

Norton protested. "We're not equipped for Search and Rescue, Anon."

"I…don't expect any survivors. All I need you to do is recover an intact Identity Disk…here."

A holographic map appeared in everyone's HUDs, indicating an objective ten minutes away from an elevator shaft.

"Get in, get it, get out. Avoid engaging anything hostile, if possible."

Logris spoke up "No offense meant err, mister Prime, I guess? Wasn't this section of the Aquifer declared off-limits some thousand cycles ago? What were there Rangers doing in there?"

"I'm afraid I can't reveal that to independent contractors. Mark my words, however, that whatever is on that disk is of paramount importance, and that we're willing to reward you handsomely for its successful delivery."

"How handsomely?" asked Ed.

"We're willing to give each of you twenty vials of energy at concentration three point two."

The debugger next to Ed whistled. Ed, for his part, was more skeptical.

"I'm guessing there's a great deal of risk to match the pay."

Anon sighed. "Yes."

"Let me put it in perspective," said Norton. "Delta team was composed of veterans. They've been doing this function for close to nine hundred cycles and they had the best Armored Shell Mods and weapons Carina's rezzing centers had to offer. Whatever took _them _out, it's not regular bugs."

Suddenly, the promise of riches wasn't so tempting anymore.

Anon spoke up. "I know you programs aren't career debuggers, and I can't order you to do any more than what you've accomplished already, but the longer we wait, the more likely any disk data Delta Team gathered is going to degrade beyond all recognition. I don't have time to set up a proper S&R and you're the closest to Delta's last known position by far. It's time to decide. You take the elevator up and we'll look after you, and pay what you've earned, no hard feelings. You take the elevator down, and you won't have to worry about being fed for a very long time. Anon out."

And just like that, the hologram vanished. For a few seconds, nobody knew what to say. Except Ed.

"So we're all going up, right?"

"Fuck yes," said everyone else in unison. Everyone except Norton. When everyone hastily made their way inside the elevator, Norton stayed outside.

"Sir?" asked Logris. "You're not thinking of going there on your own…right?"

"I am," Norton answered.

"Come on, boss! The bonus can't be worth your-"

"I'm a career debugger. Big bonuses like that are for mercs, not me."

"Honor and Camaraderie, is it now?" Ed asked with some contempt in his voice. If there was anything he disliked, it was brutes who deluded themselves with such nonsense.

"Edward, I've known you for barely a millicycle…but I can already tell _you _wouldn't understand."

Norton closed the elevator door. "You guys go first. I'll call the elevator back down when you're out."

One the other three debuggers pressed the up button, well on their way topside. Five minutes later, the elevator cage came back down, and Norton went in.

"So, why are you two here?"

"Well," said Logris, "I figured you could use some help with the machinery down there. I used to work in places like this. Plus, I know some good people who could use those extra rations."

"And you, Ed?"

"…'leaving my employer to die' just doesn't look good on a resumé," answered Ed with a shrug.

Logris handed Norton a pair of red vials. "Everyone else just ran for the LAPC…well, they were nice enough to leave us their ammo before they did."

"I see." Norton fitted the vials on his arm cannon's ammo carousel. "Well, I'm glad for the backup, in any case." And with that, he pressed the down button and sent a message to Anon. They were on their way.

~O~

"That couldn't have been the only reason," said Quorra.

Ed gave Julie a meaningful look. "I had two women to feed at home. One's useless…"

Julie stuck out her tongue at him. Ed ignored her, and turned to Quorra.

"…and the other was playing dead, and would apparently not wake up unless we fed her energy drinks. What choice did I have, really?"

~O~

Ed hated the dark. They had walked in the darkness with nothing but their helmets' flashlights for illumination. Worst of all…everything was dusty. Dust gathered on the driest part of the ruined walls of these sewers, and it hung in the air like pollen. Norton ordered Ed and Logris to keep their helmets on at all times…something that Ed happily complied with.

They came across a ladder, and Norton checked his map, and ordered them to go down. As always, Ed took point.

_I swear to God,, if there are zombies down there…_

His feet settled on what looked the grating of a walkway, surrounding what looked like a huge cistern, caked with dust, much like everything else. Despite that, it seemed to emit a faint glow. When Logris came down, he whistled.

"Well, hello there…" Logris wiped the dust away from the cistern, revealing the familiar glow of energy…only the fluid seemed to shift around rapidly. "Ha ha! Jackpot!"

"What is this?" asked Ed. Norton came up behind them.

"It's an auxiliary fluid tank. Refineries use them when they've got too much raw fluid coming in from the Aquifer, or when the amount they refine goes over the necessary consumption. In the latter case, they make a pretty good emergency reserve."

"It looks…unstable. Is it raw?"

"Yep. Completely undrinkable."

"Damn." _Of course it is. Would make this little sidequest rather moot, wouldn't it?_

Logris chuckled. "Heh, I know."

Norton spoke up. "Any way we could use this? For our guns, maybe?"

"Hm…weaponized energy fluid is basically half-refined raw liguid…but it's still a lot more stable than _this_. Don't recommend handling it or even putting a little in an itty bitty vial: it would just eat its way out of it. Although…"

"What?" asked Ed.

"There should be a console nearby. Let's look for it!"

True enough, there was a console nearby, Logris ran up to it, disengaged his arm cannon, and removed a service panel.

"Either of you can spare an energy vial? I need to give this some power; a red vial will do…"

Ed opened his arm cannon's ammo carousel. Glowing a bright blue amidst the crimson light of the other red vials was the one Quorra had 'hacked' somehow. Ed still had no idea how much of his ammo count it stood for, and opted to take out a red one. The ammo counter in his HUD went down by ten. He handed the vial over to Logris, who wasted no time hooking it up to a tube. The console lit up, and several holograms came alive around it.

"Let's see…" Logris quickly went through several menus, looking for something. "Yes! There's a small emergency generator hooked up to this very cistern!"

"And that helps us how?" asked Norton. "The energy isn't stable!"

"The generators here are built to handle unstable energy…at least for a whole microcycle. This one's ETCs are still intact…"

Without waiting for permission, Logris proceeded to press a few buttons. To Ed's relief, the lights came on, illuminating the cistern room.

"Programs, my fellow debuggers, we have scored. I feel so much better."

"You just turned on the lights," said Norton, almost dismissively.

"Well, if we're looking for something, better to do it like this than in pitch blackness."

Ed looked down, and found the floor of the cistern room to be five stories below the walkway. The whole place was lined with pipes, some leaking, others intact and glowing. The cistern itself, which dominated almost half the space, was propped up with four obsidian pillars reinforced with steel frames. The ground had a few drains around, no doubt to deal with energy spills should the cistern rupture.

"I think it's already paid off," Ed said, staring down.

Norton followed his gaze down. Slumped against a pillar was an armored figure, surrounded by faintly glowing green insect husks.

"Could be a survivor. Edward, come with me. Logris, stay here and keep an eye on the power…let's not overload that generator."

"Will do. Just make it quick, alright? Even with the lights on this place gives me the creeps."

Ed followed Norton to a stairwell and they made their way to the bottom. They reached the body, and found it headless. The helmet was on the ground, between it's legs. Upon closer observation, they found the armor was filled with crystalline ash, and its identity disk some distance away. Norton went straight for it, while Ed knelt down and inspected the helmet.

It was just like his, a bit smaller, with some extra armor plates and some kind of camera stuck on the side. He removed the device, and, just to see what it did, plugged it on the right side of his own helmet.

Text flooded his HUD, until clear status messages showed up.

_PROFILER MODULE CONNECTED. UPLOADING SUBROUTINE Ver 3.12._

_UPLOAD COMPLETE._

LOADING…DONE.

UPLOADING SUBROUTINE VIRUS SCAN Ver 1.85…..DONE.

LOADING…DONE.

Ed didn't have to wait long to figure out what the Profiler was supposed to do, as data showed up on his HUD, near a crosshair. Staring at the helmet long enough conjured up an outline around it and some kind of radial progress bar, and Ed instinctively knew it was actively scanning whatever he was pointing at. He finished scanning the helmet.

_Just like Metroid._

KAVACHA SHELL MODULE (HEAD)

SUBMASK Ver 3.54 INSTALLED

VIRAL SHIELD Ver 2.23 INSTALLED

PROFILER Ver 3,12 INSTALLED, REQUIRED MODULE MISSING.

VIRUS SCAN Ver 1.85 INSTALLED, REQUIRED MODULE MISSING

OVERAL INTEGRITY: 85 PERCENT.

WARNING: VOXELS DETECTED. MODULE DEGRADATION IN PROGRESS.

Ed looked up, deciding to scan Norton out of curiosity. Instead, Norton was standing right besides him and seemed to be staring holes right into him. Ed couldn't actually see Norton's eyes through the glowing slits in his full helmet, but he could tell he had made him angry, somehow.

"What? It's not like he's using it."

Norton just shook his head in disgust, got back to inspecting the disk, muttering something under his breath. Ed figured it couldn't have been a compliment.

Norton pressed a few buttons and cursed. "Damned encryption. I can't find anything that's not scrambled...Come on, Emsi, you must have left me something…"

Ed chuckled. "Look for an audio file."

"...Emsi did like to keep detailed logs…usually in writing, but good call."

_Every dead NPC keeps a log nearby._

Surely enough, Norton found an audio file, created today and edited just a millicycle ago. He loaded it, and the voice of a woman played.

"_Debugger Delta Team Squad leader Emsi's mission log, 54.40.3027 ASF. We're all going on another search and destroy under the Quarantine Zone. Our numbers aren't up to snuff, not since last centicycle's disaster, so we've had to recruit from the local population. I don't see why Caesar won't send us reinforcements…By the bin, raw recruits would be better than drawing from a pool of desperate hungry programs. Oh well, at least I'll be going with my full team. We weren't around when the last S&D went tits up. Beta team…well, right now it's just Norton. Poor bastard just lost his whole squad. I hope he bounces back…but with only rubes to choose from…aw, man, maybe I can talk to Anon, see if he can give him an easy assignment. Maybe help set up the early warning net?"_

"_Log 2: Oh, wow. Anon was going to send Beta Team close to the aquifer to find whatever ate half our men. Figured it'd be a good idea to send the 'most expendable' team. Norton's a survivor, but...that might be too much for him, what with babysitting a gang of newbies. I took on the assignment, arguing that since my team's the healthiest and better equipped, we'd have a much better chance of success. *snort* 'Most expendable', indeed! For such a nice guy, Anon can be one cold son of a glitch. Don't know if I find that admirable or if it makes me want to kick him in the balls. Maybe both."_

"_Log 3: Huh…Norton managed to get his hands on an Arena veteran. Right under Kasper's nose, too. *laugh* Apparently he's got some Heavy Weapons and Heavy Vehicle permissions and subroutines for –and this the amazing part- taking down Goliath! I have a hard time believing it, but Norton's got an eye for talent. We…kinda took the last Heavy Baton. Ox needed a new one. Oh well, Beta team won't have to set up those nets in any high risk sectors, so that gladiator shouldn't find himself in need of one. I hope."_

Ed snorted._ I lost count of many of these things I killed. 'Low risk sectors", indeed!_

"_Log 4: we made it all the way down. It's…really, really dark in here. And dusty. That's right, the place is chock full of Phantom Dust. I've locked everyone's helmets. Defintely need to keep an eye on Ox. He's a former addict. He's been clean for close to eight hundred cycles, now…but you can't be too careful. Can't send him back out alone, either. I couldn't forgive myself if something happened to him. He's a good guy, and he's making the most of his second chance. Note to self, call Anon, see if he can send us a scrubber truck. We'll need to clean all that crap off our Shells."_

"Phantom Dust?" asked Ed.

"It's a local drug," answered Norton. "Overclocks your power cycles, amongst other things. Programs who use that stuff supposedly feel like the Users themselves."

"I'm guessing it's got some serious side-effects?"

"You'd be right. Take too much for too long and you'll start glitching out and go completely berserk...overdose, and you go Viral. And the withdrawal symptoms? Let's just say Ox is really, REALLY lucky."

"Viral? Are we infected?"

"No, the Dust doesn't work on modules or Shells. It's got to make its way inside you, corrupt you from the inside out. As long as you don't the stuff in, you'll be fine."

Ed looked up at Logris, who was still fiddling with the console.

"Don't worry about him, I locked your helmets."

"_Log 5: I caught Ox fiddling with his helmet…He's itching for it, I can tell…But we're close to those_ _sensor readings…they're huge, and they're definitely viral. Can't turn back now. We need confirmation."_

"_Log 6: Tried communicating with Anon…but all I get is garbage on the wireless. Maybe it's the dust messing with it, somehow?"_

"…_Log 7: I was wondering why we didn't encounter any Gridbugs so deep into the ground. The place should be swarming with them…but now I know why. They were scared away. There is something worse than them that made their home here. They're all asleep, thank the Users they're all asleep. *deep breath* Got the remember, the scans are in my memory, timestamp 075:758:999. We're hauling ass and getting the hell out. There's an elevator nearby…and we're just under Norton's sector, too! I-What the? Ox? OX? Oh Users, what are you doing? __***I WANT TO HEAR THE SONG AGAIN* **__All of you! Hold him down! *_I'm trying!_* Ox, for the love of- DON'T-"_

_Well, saw that one coming, _thought Ed.

"_Log 8: Ox, by the users, fucking OX! I didn't think he'd be so desperate! Just took out his disk and starting cutting at his helmet. Once he got a whiff of the stuff he couldn't be stopped…he was always the biggest and the meanest, and now…Why didn't I just send his ass back topside. Stupid! Stupid...! *sigh* It's just me, Maxine and Marax. The others… Oh users, the others. He did…things to them…I have to focus. Focus. Focus focus focus. We're almost at the elevator, just need to open this door to a cistern room and…what was that? Was that…someone roaring? Why would…Oh Users above HOSTILES! INCOMING!"_

"_They're awake. My User, they're awake! They got Maxine and Marax…and they got me. They got me in the leg! They got me in the leg! And guess what? Fucking Stairs! I CAN BARELY FUCKING WALK ANYMORE AND THE ONLY THING LEFT IN MY WAY ARE FUCKING STAIRS! *Sobs* I haven't got much time…I managed to lock the door in time…But I…I think Ox is trying to open it. I never thought…They were just stories, you know? Something to scare the immigrants with! But the stories are real. The Beast is real. He touched this place…and we woke his spawn!"_

"_Norton…Norton, I pray to the Users that you'll hear this…but, I'm sorry, tell them I'm sorry. I should've known better. I should've…I'd be right there with you, you know? We'd have drinks over at the Valhalla and we'd swap new war stories…I'm sorry, I'm sorry all I have are moments to live and I don't know what to say. I wish you were here. You always kept cool in moments like this…I should've asked for you. I should have…you, right here, right by my side. Norton…Norton I…__***HE IS NOT HERE FOR YOU.* **__No… __*** YOU ARE ALL ALONE* **__Fuck you! __***YOU DO NOT HEAR THE SONG, BUT I WILL MAKE YOU HEAR IT!* **__Come on, I'm ready! I'M READY!"_

The recording went on, with sounds of cannon blasts and roaring. Then there was screaming. And screaming, and screaming. There was a sickening crack, and the sound of glass falling on the floor…and finally, there was a quick intake of breath, over and over again, and moaning-

Norton turned the recording off, and knelt by Emsi's remains. And he wept.

Ed, whose heart has been racing, was unsure what to say. He gulped, hard. All he knew was that this game got a little less family friendly, and that the voice actress's performance had been…spot on. But he suspected Norton would not respond well to that comment, and wisely kept his mouth shut.

Somehow, things had just gotten a bit more real.

"I should've requested a transfer…" murmured Norton.

"I'm sorry?"

"Anon asked me to pick a team to join. I refused. I always have to lead. Even it's a bunch of starved data pushers…I always have to lead."

"Norton. We have what we came for…The longer we stay here, the more likely we're going to join her and then all our efforts –hers included- will have been for nothing."

Norton shook his head, "I know! Just…did you take her Tag?"

"Her what?"

Norton reached inside the empty chest plate, desperately searching for something. "Her Tag! Every career debugger gets one! It's…"

"Her disk is enough! We don't have time for-"

The light went out. Then flickered back on.

"Guys!" Logris shouted from above. "Either I SERIOUSLY overestimated the durability of that generator…or something's nibbling at the ETCs!"

"Can you fix it?" Edward shouted.

"I can do some creative rerout-"

Something roared.

"Oh God, that sounded like…"

"Ox," stated Norton. "He's here."

The light flickered off again, and Ed readied his weapon. His gun arm wouldn't stop shaking, and he kept turning at every sound. The ETCs on the walls flickered as Logris tried to get the lights back. Ed could swear he saw the outline of…something.

"Turn your flash light on." Norton ordered. He was calm. Ed wondered how Norton could stay so calm, just before complying. There was nothing where he saw the outline. Did it move away?

The lights flickered on, and then off again. Ed heard the sound of metal clanging. It was loud.

It came from right behind him, he turned slowly…and he saw.

Ox's mangled face was staring down at Ed, hate and disdain just pouring from its eyes. The lights flickered again, on and off at random, making the monster look like a flickering apparition. The mad program had a huge frame, almost two meters tall unbalanced and deformed by tumors and cysts, riddled with glowing green veins. Its armor was twisted and torn, and it had multiple medallions adorning its neck. It raised its mangled deformed arm, and Ed noted its weapon looked oddly like a cricket bat with two handles on each end before it slammed on his side. Ed felt weightless, for just a moment, until he could feel his body slam against a pillar on the other side of the room. He could feel his consciousness slip, but he held fast even as his ears rang, muting any and all sound.

He saw Norton, standing defiantly against the monster as it tried charging him. Norton shot at its face, causing it to cover it. It did not see him throw a disk at its feet, and it stumbled and slammed head first into the pillar. Ox's unarmored head cracked, but it did not die nor lose consciousness. It swung wide, and Norton had been standing too close when he tried to dodge. The makeshift bat grazed Norton's helm, and he fell, leaving him at Ox's nonexistent mercy.

Ed charged his gun, and aimed.

_What am I doing? I should be running. Why aren't I running?_

He fired, taking a chunk of Ox's deformed flesh in a small flash. Ox turned, ignoring Norton and focus all its hatred on Ed. Logris had tried to make his presence known, taking potshots at the creature, but it ignored him. Ed got up, and kept firing while backing away, futilely trying to keep his distance.

SCANNING…

Ox was so close. The world slowed down

A stream of data came over his HUD. It was gibberish, but it was familiar gibberish.

Ed kept on firing. It was useless. He was almost out of ammo…

The patterns revealed themselves. A method to the madness. Ed knew the code. He had seen it before. I had known it before. He knew it now.

_No…it can't be. They couldn't have…no, no, NO we kept the data secure, nobody could have…This is Real. This madness is Real._

Ox grabbed him by the throat.

_I am going to die…_

And Ox slammed him against the wall, pinning him right against an electric conduit.

Ed felt a tingle across his skin, slowly crawling its way into his muscles. He couldn't believe of slowly it took to be electrocuted, and he despaired. His suffering would be long. Or would it? Ox was once again raising his club, but he was slow, so slow. No, he would suffer. And he would die.

_Julie, I'm so sorry._

The whole world froze

**Don't be afraid.**

_What…Who are you?_

**You're not going to die. You're going to be alright.**

_How?_

**Let the energy flow through you.**

Time was catching up, Ox' club was coming in faster.

**Reach out.**

Ed, out of desperation, put his arm cannon in the way of the club. It struck the ammo carousel, and it exploded in a shower of blue sparks. The concussion was enough to knock it away.

**Focus it. **

His arm cannon dissolved away, but his arm was fine. Ed planted his newly freed hand on Ox's face. He let the energy flow through him, he reached out, he focused it.

**Let it go.**

Ox screamed as its face burned, and it backed away, letting Ed fall on the floor as the metal club clattered on the ground, its circuitry flickering between green and blue. Ed stared up at the monster, it wasn't out of the fight, and it was more enraged than ever. It raised both its deformed fists into the air, ready to crush Ed's fragile prone form. It roared…in pain.

Norton buried his disk into Ox's back, used it as leverage to climb onto the monster and hold its head in a lock. He buried Emsi's disk deep in Ox's throat.

Ox gurgled, but it was still not defeated. It tried to shake off its rider, but Norton was more tenacious.

"I'm ready, Ox…" the old warrior whispered.

Ox flailed and roared, pointelessy. It got farther and farther away from Ed.

"I'M READY, ARE YOU?" Norton screamed, holding fast as fluids and sparks showered from Ox's throat.

Ed tried to get up. He could barely hear someone calling him.

"…ward! Edward!" It was Logris. "The Baton! GET IT! GET IT NOW!"

With no other ideas running through his head, Ed did as he was told. He picked up the weapon, its weight was considerable, but he held it up anyways, ready to strike.

"NOT LIKE THAT! PULL BOTH HANDLES! CRACK IT OPEN!"

Ed noticed some holographic visual cues, much like the ones on Logris' Rods. He pulled both handles, and the cues changed. The circuitry turned red, and holographic shapes formed around it. He followed the cues, and the shapes made a familiar form that solidified into a heavy mass.

It was a Gatling gun.

Ox shook Norton away, slamming him against a pillar. It focused its attention once again upon Ed, and got ready to charge.

_HEAVY ENERGY REPEATER DETECTED. PERMISSIONS CONFIRMED. SYNCING SUBROUTINES…INCREASING KINETIC ASSIST OUTPUT._

Suddenly, his weapon got lighter, and Ed knew what to do next.

"Burn, you filthy piece of shit!"

He let loose a stream of energy pulses into Ox's body, knocking the monster back, shaving away whole chucks of flesh away from it. Ed's new weapon roared and roared, and it looked like victory was finally within reach.

But Ox stopped screaming. His flesh stoof firm.

"DIE, GODDAMN YOU, DIE!"

Ox's flesh began to bloat, absorbing every bit of energy Ed threw at him. Horns grew on its head, its skin bubbled and popped, and it looked like he was about to explode. Ed's ammo count, however, was dwindling fast. He couldn't keep this up forever.

"Edward!" shouted Logris. "SHOOT THE CISTERN!"

Ed rose his weapon as it kept spitting fire. It ate through the cistern's glass, and the cistern in turn spewed a stream of electrified fluid upon Ox. He only grew bigger and bigger. Ed could swear he reveled in it…and then, Ox fell, his flesh burnt to a near cinder.

He was quiet.

He was still.

It was over.

Ed took a deep breath, and dropped his empty weapon.

_Dear God, it's over._

~O~

Julie was aghast. "Oh, Ed…I didn't know…I couldn't have known. You must be…"

Ed held up is hand to silence her. "I'm fine. Don't start coddling me."

"What happened next?" asked Quorra.

"Logris came down and applied some stability patches. We could walk, but only barely, battered and bruised as we were…It took us a while longer than it should have to make it back to the cargo elevator, but as you can see, we made it. Norton, however, wasn't quite done with me…"

~O~

Logris had just requested an immediate evac once they were clear the of Phantom Dust's influence, along with a decontamination truck. He also confirmed to Anon that the 'package' was secure and on its way topside. Both Norton and Ed were slumped against the elevator's cage, tired beyond belief. Logris, meanwhile, was at the elevator's holographic pad, speeding up the machine's ascent to the top. He couldn't stop grinning under his helmet.

"You guys…you guys were mighty. I'll make sure everybody knows what you did! There'll be songs, man! Songs!"

"Save your breath," said Norton bitterly. "Delta's mission was supposed to be kept secret. Anon will put a gag order on it and Users help you if you break it."

"But…"

"Don't worry about it. I was never in this for the fame." Norton stared at the set of five medallions he had ripped from Ox's neck. It was the Tags of Delta team, claimed as trophies by the mad beast. Emsi, Maxine, Marax, DeeDos, Emerac. All good programs. Norton had simply thrown Ox's tag in a puddle of unstable energy to be disintegrated. Ed assumed that's what happened to those who betrayed the Rangers: they were simply forgotten, forever.

Then, Norton stared long and hard at Emsi's disk.

"Logris, stop the elevator."

"What? But…"

"Stop it now." And Logris complied.

"Edward. I overheard you and Logris talking. You said you were a security program?"

"…Yes," Ed answered tiredly. "That is what I said."

Norton lightly tossed the disk onto Ed's lap. "I need you to decrypt it."

"…Why?"

"Because I need to know why. I need to know what these programs gave their lives for. Anon? He'll never tell me, not until I 'need to know' or some other crap."

Ed sighed. He really was too tired for this.

"I know you're tired, and I am too…but I'll never be able to rest until I have an answer. Please. I beg you."

"Oh, _fine. _Is there keyboard on this blasted thing?"

"Sure, just press there…now, it's got a very complex 8-bit encryption…"

Ed snorted. In less than one minute, he was done, and tossed the disk back to Norton. "Enjoy the read."

Logris couldn't believe his eyes. "Users Above that was Monitor-class 8-bit encryption! Nobody can crack that!"

"Maybe you can't, but I had to design security for _Users. _Good ones can solve 8-bit encryption in their _sleep_."

_The rest let scripts do the more complex work._

Norton typed in the timestamp from Emsi's audio log. A holographic video played for all three men to see.

It was the image of a huge cavern, a nest of insectoid creatures slumbering of the jagged walls. They were all lit from below by rivers of glowing green magma. On an island of jagged rock, standing tall amidst the sleeping insects, was a tall, multi-limbed, vaguely feminine shaped creature. It had a crown of horns, curving around its head like a halo, its six eyes watching vigilantly over the slumbering creatures like a mother over her babes. It's lower abdomen was a sack, filled with small, glowing eggs. Data and code streamed over the image, and multiple red triangles denoted each individual viral offspring.

It was a Queen.

It was pregnant.

It was ready to give birth.

Ed memorized everything. _Everything_. He willed himself to engrave every single detail of this vision on the disk on his back, to prove his words were true should Quorra ever wake. As much as he hated to admit it, he would need her help to deal with this.

Norton said nothing.

Logris gulped, hard.

~O~

"…So we've got a Viral timebomb ticking away right under us," stated Quorra.

Ed responded by massaging his eyes. "Yes."

"And we're surrounded by a partition field."

"Yes"

"So once the babies come out, they'll be hungry. And we'll have no where to escape to."

"Yes."

"Tell me the Monitors are planning _something._"

"_I have no idea._ Once we got cleaned up and kept isolated in an observation lab for a while, it was as Norton said: Anon had us sworn to secrecy, and we were discreetly paid for our services. No fanfare. Not even an acknowledgement of the threat."

Ed produced a box the size of a cigarette pack and tossed it at Quorra. She immediately recognized it as an archive data packet. She decompressed it, and it became a box filled with fifty vials of concentrated energy.

"Here," Ed said, "you must be thirsty. Or Hungry. Or whatever."

Quorra slipped a vial on her belt.

"And…" this time he produced a small stick. "…twelve thousand and three hundred 'bits'. I hope you can make something useful out of this." He set it down on his couch's armrest. "Now, if you two ladies could kindly leave and do girly stuff, I have more work to do."

"What work?" asked Julie.

"I need to program a vaccine and anti-viral program to lock in and disinfect any Beast-ridden program. I remember the strain, I just need to-"

Quorra got up "No."

Ed stopped rubbing his eyes. "I'm sorry?"

"You're still tired, you need to get some sleep."

"No I-"

Before he could protest any further, Quorra had gently tapped his temple. Ed's consciousness ebbed away, as if a hundred years of sleeplessness had finally caught up with him at that very moment. Quorra caught his head and gently cradled it.

Julie sat up. "How did you…did you just put him to sleep? How?"

"You know what? I have no idea. Come on and scoot from the bed."

"What b-?"

To Julie's surprise, the floor beneath Julie rose into a rectangular slab, and softened into a mattress. Julie immediately made room while Quorra carried Ed over to the newly formed bed. She set him down gently.

_**Give him a warrior's rest, and a warrior's reward. May he dream of wives and future conquest.**_

_Cute, but I doubt he cares much of conquests. I'm not even sure he's keen on wives, either._

_**What man wouldn't?**_

_Ed's no ordinary guy._

"Hm, he's cute when he's asleep," Quorra quipped.

Julie laughed faintly at that. She thought of covering him, but he was still clad in armor. She knelt down behind him, caressing his forehead.

"I complain, but then he goes through hell and back for a few bottles of glowing water. I'll never really understand him. He treats me like crap most of the time, but then he goes and does…_this. _For _us._"

Quorra sighed. She couldn't figure him out either.

"Julie, I have to go and purchase some equipment. Maybe even some weapons. We're going to need them if we're going to deal with this problem." She put her hand on Julie's shoulder. "Keep and eye on him. Make sure he gets a good…ten hours of sleep, okay? I'll put a proper lock on the door, so you don't have to worry about unwelcome visitors."

Julie nodded, and simply sat down next to the bed, bringing her knees to her chin. Quorra took the credit chit and reconfigured the door before opening it.

"Quorra?"

"…Yeah?"

"It's like…this whole world is coming apart at the seams. There's so much going on…are we…are we going to be okay?"

"…We will be."

"…Are we ever going to go back home?"

"…We will. I promise you…"

Julie smiled weakly. Quorra wasn't all that sure if she believer her. But with that, she left, and closed the door behind her.

Ed dreamt of a harem of wives and defeated enemies for an instant, his true joy in life taking over his soul. He dreamt of code, of expression, of parentheses, of mathematics, of numbers real and imaginary.

He dreamt of the very fabric of a Universe he thought he would never see.

He dreamt of how to reshape it to his will.

_Digital Jazz, man._

~O~

"_So they're letting you go?" Norton asked Ed as he passed by his Pit cell, escorted by two Guards. He was clad only in his Shell underlay, while Ed had his armor returned to him. The Guards allowed Ed to stop, feeling no harm in the two of them having a conversation. They knew what these two did. They knew they deserved a lot more than just a few vials and bits._

"_Yeah, I haven't got any symptoms. Why aren't they letting _you _go?"_

"_Punched Anon in the face."_

"_Oh. I…hope it made you feel better?"_

"_It did. Got me some extra time in the pit, though… Hey, I've been meaning to ask."_

"_What?"_

"_That thing you did…down there." He eyed the Guards meaningfully. "With the ETC."_

_Ed said nothing._

"_You wound up giving him one hell of a…punch."_

_Ed smiled. "What can I say, you can just about anything when you're fighting for your life."_

"_Sure. Some things, though? Some things are just downright miraculous."_

_Ed didn't react at all. He betrayed nothing._

"_Goodbye, Norton."_

"_Goodbye…"_

_The guards took this as their cue to move on to the quartermaster._

_Norton knew. He, like all the others, had seen the Omen of the East. But few were old enough to remember what that meant. _

_But Norton knew, and when Ed and the Guards were all out of earshot, Norton muttered something else._

"…_and be safe, User."_

~O~

Author's Notes:

Well, that one turned out better (and longer) than I expected. I think I'll write some kind of Codex entry to bring everyone up to speed (myself included) on the updated technology of the Grid (For example, what's the big deal about Debugger Armor?). After that, our show will resume as planned.

Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, folks!


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